Corn Cultivation and Picking

Corn was planted in early to middle of May. Prior to planting the plowed land was disked, perhaps harrowed. When we were first on the farm the planting was done with a two-row horse-drawn planter. Later on my uncle invested in a four-row planted what was attached to the Farmall tractor. The seed corn in earlier times was selected from the corn as it came out of the crib into the corn sheller “drag” (the conveyer that took it to the corn sheller)—good well-shaped ears were chosen. This procedure was followed only with open-pollinated corn—it could not be a good practice with hybrid corn. Uncle Carl would test the selected ears for germination in the corn room—a small room in the upstairs of the farmhouse just north of the boys’ bedroom.

The corn room contained racks for holding the individual seed corn ears, and I believe the germination test equipment. Uncle Carl started to use hybrid seed corn shortly after it was first introduced in the 1930s and after that the corn room no longer received its yearly charge of seed corn ears.

He was also one of the first farmers to use artificial fertilizer—when he started to use it the fertilizer was applied at the same time the corn was planted. For all his lack of ability in personal contacts with people, my uncle was quite up-to-date in following advances in agricultural technology. Another example of this was his early use of rubber tires on his Farmall.

Originally corn was planted in “checked” rows — i.e. the corn plants were at the intersections of squares all through the field. This pattern was achieved by having a wire run through the planter that had wire knots on it that tripped the planted at the appropriate time. Thus the corn could be cultivated (or plowed) in either of two directions at right angles to each other.

The first cultivation was simply known as the first cultivating. The second cultivation (at right angles to the first) was called “crossing the corn” and if a third cultivation was done it was called “laying by.” By the time we were on the farm my uncle cultivated the corn with a two-row cultivator mounted on the Farmall. This displaced the old one-row cultivator drawn by two horses or the old two-row cultivator drawn by three horses. The first cultivation was done when the corn was 2 to 4 inches high (weather permitting) and the laying by when the corn plants were not more than 2 feet high.

Oftentimes uncle Carl was late getting the work done and I can remember laying by the corn when it was 3-1/2 to 4 feet tall. When the corn was this tall, turning the tractor at the ends of the field usually resulted in considerable damage to the corn plants. One of the few direct compliments I ever had from my uncle was when I was laying by this tall corn on the east forty. He came out to the field to see how I was doing and he remarked at how little damage I had done to the corn in turning the cultivator around at the ends of the field.

After the corn had received its final cultivation, it received no more attention until corn harvest except for walking through the corn rows pulling sunflower weeds and milkweeds. Corn picking by hand was on the way out by the early 1930s for my uncle — he had be then a mounted two-row cornpicker and often did custom picking in addition to picking his own corn. One year after hard winds, enough corn had blown off the stalks to make machine picking impracticable and I received my first and only real taste of picking corn by hand. However, even with normal conditions enough corn was missed by the picked so that uncle Carl and one or more of us boys would glean the fields for the missed corn.

Corn was stored in the large corn crib — a building designed and I think constructed by me uncle who made the internal elevator. This latter worked quite well with oats (which were stored in two large over-bins in the corn crib) but was relatively inefficient with ear corn. The elevator was powered by a large one-cylinder gas engine. The corn was shelled for delivery to the elevator in Gowrie along in the later part of the summer. Here uncle Carl used his corn sheller (with which he also did custom corn shelling). Corn shelling was a dusty disagreeable job, even worse than the dusty oats threshing.

After the corn had been picked and the missed ears gleaned, the cows were turned out into the fields to find whatever they could to eat. Despite the gleaning there were always ears that were still missed and the cows would find many of them. Cows eat corn on the cob in a different fashion from horses. Cows put the whole cob into their mouths, sort of lengthwise and proceed to masticate the entire unit. Horses on the other hand carefully bite off the kernels, leaving the cob.