It's a beautiful Autumn day today. A crisp 54 degrees, bright sunshine and deep, deep blue skies. Perfect weather for harvesting corn. It's been a little wetter than you'd want recently, but today is perfect. The combines are out in the fields in force, mostly John Deere green with a good showing of Case IH red as well. There should be a few New Hollands out there and perhaps an occasional CAT. Grain trucks shuttle back and forth; new Peterbuilt day-cabs with full trailers, rusty old Ford F-600's, and classic International trucks. Hundreds of thousands of bushels of corn are currently being stripped from the stalks, husked, seperated from the cob, and loaded onto the waiting trucks in a single operation.
Innovation in harvesting technology and techniques allow the modern American farmer to harvest large tracts of land with very few people in a short amount of time. Even a single farmer can now quickly harvest acreage that would have been out of reach for a team of people a few short decades ago. So what did Central Illinois corn farmers do before the advent of GPS guided combines and diesel powered Kenworths?
Bill Kemp, at the McLean Country Museum of History provides us with a glimpse into harvest time in the Midwest before the advent of mechanized harvesting equipment:
Today, corn is harvested by the kernel, but for most of human history the grain was harvested and stored by the ear. In Octobers now long past, the Corn Belt countryside would be dotted with groups of men and boys methodically working their way through the fields, picking the ears by hand.As you can imagine, this was a simple process in concept, yet demanding and skillful work if done well and quickly. In the manner of men since the beginning of time (I assume) any activity that requires skill and strength must soon become a competitive endeavor.
A good picker - also known as a husker, shucker or even jerker - could work two or three rows simultaneously, snapping the ears off the stalks, removing the husks, and bouncing the now-cleaned ears off of a raised backboard (or "bangboard") of a horse-drawn wagon.
The most difficult step was stripping the husk off the ear. For this, many used glove-like husking hooks. Strapped to the wrist or across the palm, these tools featured a sharp steel edge that when drawn down the husk separated the shuck from the ear.
Like a lot of manual farm labor, husking was simple to learn yet difficult to master. It demanded stamina, speed and hands of iron. The more accomplished huskers competed against each other in local, county, state and national contests, and crowds numbering in the tens of thousands would gather in fields to watch men "bang" upward of 50 ears a minute.The next time you here someone refer to the "Midwestern work ethic" keep this story in mind. Mr. Bauman single-handedly harvested 36.5 bushels of corn in 80 minutes. Now, that was the state record of course, not your average Livingston Country cornhusker, but still. And the next time you see a football game on a Sunday afternoon and marvel at the huge stadiums and the 75,000 people in attendance, think back through Illinois history to a time when farmers drew bigger crowds than athletes or movie stars:
The typical husking contest lasted 80 minutes. Speed was not the only measure of success. Pickers, for instance, were penalized for leaving corn in the field (referred to as "gleanings"), or failing to strip away enough husk on the picked ears.
Irvin (also known as Irvan) Bauman, an unmarried, 22-year-old farmer from Congerville, captured the 1935 state championship. A crowd estimated at 25,000 gathered at the Woodford County farm of George Shuman to watch Bauman husk 2,662 pounds of corn, with a deduction of 105 pounds for missed corn and excess husks. Bauman’s net load of 36.5 bushels was not far from the then-world record of 36.9 bushels.
In 1939, the state title match in Danville drew a crowd of 90,000. The champion was Ecus Vaughan, a Kentuckian who helped work his half brother’s farm in Monticello. "Despite a record-breaking crowd," the Pantagraph reported, "many of the farm advisors reported interest in husking contests waning, due to more and more general use of machines."The advent and evolution of farming machinery might be another post in itself. The 1930's were the last decade in IL to see virtually all the corn crop harvested by hand. As the country boomed after WWII, manufacturing took giant leaps forward and farming became increasingly changed by the availability of tractors, harvesters, combines and everything else that have become the staples of the modern farmer's life.
So next time you drive through the country and witness the corn harvest coming in, think of two things. Firstly, marvel at the ingenuity and technological prowess that allows so few people to grow and harvest so much grain. It is a feat unprecedented in human history. Secondly, take moment to picture groups people moving through the fields picking and shucking each ear of corn by hand and tossing them into a horse-drawn wagon; take a moment to appreciate the strength, determination, and hard-working spirit that was exemplified by the people that built these counties into the heartland that we sometimes take for granted today.
~ Gabriel
Bill Kemp, the Archivist/Librarian at the McLean County Museum of History has put together a series of articles at the Pantagraph detailing various aspects of life in Bloomington/Normal and the surrounding counties throughout the history of the region. I find these articles fascinating and intend bring a few of these articles and stories to my blog in an effort to celebrate the history and cultural roots of Central Illinois.
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4 comments:
We looked at a property recently that actually had an old corn crib built in 1900 on in it. There was a large open part in the second where they pulled the wagons in. It was quite interesting just walking through it and thinking about how they used to do this all with horses and wagons, and then store the feed corn in the corn crib for the winter.
i must admit the midewestern harvest is a time that will always be close to my heart. As an old grain hauling truck driver harvest was always a special time. Getting in the truck at 4:30am, going non-stop til' 10pm running load after load from the co-ops to any asortment of processing plants that dot the Illinois river, knowing that for every load you take out farmers are dragging every broken down trailer they have in with more grain, and if you stop, the co-op fills up. Fall days in central Illinois are some of the best days I have ever had, and driving the truck i was right in the middle of the action. Running the heater in the morning, the air in the afternoon, and back to the heater at night, the way the smell of diesel hangs in the cool morning air, and knowing that a 15min stop for coffee and a donut might mean the difference of getting one more load off. Those were some of the favorite days of my life. Thanks for taking me back for a moment, and forgive the nastalgic ramblings of a transplanted Illinois native.
Dana, thanks for stopping by. Those old corn cribs are dotted all over central IL. I've spent a good bit of my childhood play time climbing around inside them. They're a quintessential part of our landscape, it's a shame to see them crumbling and disappearing.
Ah Stonewall, You capture the feelings associated with harvest time so well. I've not been quite as directly involved of course, but great times none the less.
"...the way the smell of diesel hangs in the cool morning air..."
I must admit I have always loved this smell, and yes it does smell different in the cold and dark :) I've never driven a truck for a living, but it carries the feelings associated with hard work (firing up the back-hoe/tractors/whatever in the early morning hours) travel, adventure, etc (truck stops, buses, and so on). I hear ya.
I remember when my Dad called the combine a "mechanical marvel." Uncle Nick would come and "open" the field with his combine so Dad could run the corn picker without ruining the first few rows. Fall is the time of year that I miss Dad the most. When we were little, we would ride in the wagon which was pulled behind the corn picker and dodge the ears as they were thrown in the wagon.
My mom had one of the corn-husker gloves. She said that was an early teen, she was very fast at it when the whole extended family would get together and shuck the ears. I hope these things are never forgotten.
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