[AT] 2 row corn picker

[Greg Hass]

One of the things I like about this list, and I would like to see more 
of it, is the regional differences in the way farming is done. Examples 
include how Ralph does his or how Grant does his and the use of a 
crawler to cut and rake hay. There are many more but you get the point. 
On to the present topic of corn pickers. I only know of one in our area 
and a neighbor had that. I was in grade school at the time (high school 
class of "65" ). It was on a John Deere, something like a 720, and had a 
single front wheel. This brings us to regional differences. People 
around here always used 1 row pickers and corn choppers into I think the 
70's. I always wondered why our area was behind the rest of the country 
where they had two row equipment for years. In fact the pastor at our 
church 20 years ago was from Minnesota, and used to tell about all the 
mounted pickers mounted on Farmall M's and how hard it was to find used 
rear axles for them. I guess the heavy mounted picker and the fact the 
rear wheels were moved way out, plus pulling a wagon and maybe going too 
fast on rough headlands broke a lot of axles. Anyway, back to the story. 
In our area and other parts of Michigan going back to the 1920's a lot 
of sugar beets and edible beans have been grown. Due to the nature of 
the crops they were planted in 28 or 30 inch rows. Because of the lack 
of spray back then, everything had to be cultivated , so to avoid having 
to change the cultivator and planter all the time, everything including 
corn was planted the same (28 or 30 inch rows). After high school I 
started reading articles in farm magazines about a new concept of narrow 
row planting. I soon realized they were talking about 30 inch rows which 
I couldn't understand as we had been doing it since my grandfathers 
day.  Further reading told me that most corn areas such as Minnesota, 
Ohio, Iowa as well as others  had been using 40 or 42 inch rows all 
these years; A throwback to the horse days and horse cultivators I am 
told. Also mounted pickers which you could go anywhere in the field with 
required wide rows, plus all the early pull type 2 row pickers were wide 
row pickers. As self propelled combines started to harvest corn, their 
corn heads could harvest narrow row corn (no engine between the rows) 
although many of the early combines had wide row heads. Once 30 inch 
rows became the standard, which had been our stand for over 50 years, 
companies began making narrow row equipment and everyone in our began 
buying multiple row equipment. Just another regional thing. Probably 
more than you wanted to know.
             Greg Hass