[AT] OT I'm getting older are you? (Really OT)

David Bruce davidbruce at yadtel.net
Sat Jan 30 05:37:37 PST 2010


My tale is similar to Charlie's with the exception of a few years later 
and the other end of NC.
Most corn here was grown to feed the livestock on the farm and was 
stored in ears in the crib.  In late winter a neighbor who had a 
threshing machine would spend a day at my grandpa's and any extra corn 
was shelled.  Huge piles of corn shucks were made then they were baled 
(using the baler run by a neighbor's Oliver (Super 77 I think) to use as 
bedding or maybe as scratch for the chickens I don't really remember the 
details.
The corn here on this farm was snapped with a John Deere Model 100 
single row snapper pulled by the Allis D-14.  I was pretty young but I 
do remember helping scoop the ears of corn into the crib and also sort 
of helping with the hand shucking and turning the crank on the hand 
powered corn sheller.
This farm was small (about 100 acres) which was pretty typical for the 
area and the time.  Like Charlie said there were a very few larger 
operators who had bigger equipment and a couple custom operators.

David
NW NC

charliehill wrote:
> Dudley,  let me preface my response with some background.  I was born in 
> 1950 so I missed the old days.  However I was born in relatively poor 
> coastal NC.
> A BIG tractor was a 2 row 30 HP rig and few farmers had one.  Most farmers 
> were still using mules or small 1 row Farmall A's and AC B's, etc. 
> Combines were around by then but they were either owned by big landowners 
> who had several tennant farmers tending his land or by guys that were purely 
> custom operators and maybe had a small farm of their own.  If I remember 
> right they got a minimum of  1/5 of the crop to pick it.  If it wasn't a 
> good crop they got more.
>
> Small farmers often used a one row picker and put their corn in a crib for 
> livestock feed or in some cases broke the corn by hand and put it in the 
> crib.  I can remember as a 7 or 8 year old helping break ear corn.  Everyone 
> would take a row, break the ears off and throw them into a wagon that moved 
> along with us.
>
> My grandfather lived about 120 miles away so I wasn't there too often but he 
> was a pretty sucessful farmer for the times.  He had a Super A, and a Super 
> C and later on his son bought an M. (all Farmalls).  He raised a lot of 
> livestock and he had a large corn crib.  Some of his corn was stored as ear 
> corn and he had a fairly large hand crank sheller that he used to shell it 
> for feed.  My mother has that sheller now but I haven't gotten her to part 
> with it yet.
>
> As far as I know, by that time, early 50's all of the corn that went to the 
> elevator went shelled but I might be wrong.  I know the kind of cribs you 
> are talking about but I never remember seeing one around here.
>
> Charlie  (sleet and freezing rain this morning)
>
>   
>



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