Corn Crib Questions

rustyjunk

Member
Thinking of building a corn crib like this. I've never seen one in person I was wondering how you load this style crib? Do they have an opening or do you just load through the door? How do you keep corn from falling out the door as you load? Guess it's just a shovel to unload? I may grow enough corn to fill one gravity wagon, do they make wire style cribs this small?
 
I'm not seeing a picture in your post, maybe its coming yet.

Corn cribs were always filled from the top, typically with an elevator. A short one could be shoveled in to I guess.

At my wife's home town they have a museum, and it has this cute little ear corn wire crib. I've never seen anything this small or cute anywhere
else.

It was common to make a crib out of wood snow fence here, make a circle of it and a cable around and fill. You woundnt need that much of a
circle to hold one load. You would need a roof typically in the day the extra corn was put in the snow fence temp crib, on nice sod, and it was
fed out first so needed no roof over winter, had it gone in January anyhow.

Paul
a222002.jpg
 
most of the wire cribs are no longer in use. you may be able to find a used one cheap. not bad to take down and haul.
 
I don't want this to sound "smart", but if you are only growing one wagon load, why not just leave it on the wagon? You would save all the handling. Just a thought. Mike
 
Depends on the wagon. A wooden flat wagon so it wasn't very deep would be OK if the moisture was low enough when you picked it,but leaving it in a gravity wagon? It'll draw moisture and rot if you leave it too long.
That crib you pictured,they generally had a hole under the peak in the far end so you could shovel off the wagon in to it,then the rest was shoveled in through the doorway. They had slant boards in the doorway to keep it in.
 
paul,
next time you visit the site with the corn cribs,
tell the manager they attached the horseshoes to the crib upside down.

old wife's tale: hang up an old horse shoe for good luck,
all the good luck would run out, if you hung them up with the points down, must be hung with the points up. Ha, Ha,

only someone as old as I am and with nothing else to do remembers stuff like that from my childhood.

have a great day,
 
Another thing about a gravity wagon is they are typically metal, so when temperature changes you get condensation, so storing corn in one of those would be like trying to keep it in a barrel of water.
 
rusty,
this is a picture of my old corn crib.
history,
was built in our small town, many years ago, some of the inside supports were saw cut 3"x5"
(try to find those today)

Dad had it moved to our farm on a heavy built wood skid in the late 50's pulled by a WD45 and a Ford 800

Dad and I filled it many times with scoops over the years, note the high flip out doors, boards placed across the main door as the corn got higher and higher.

as it got older and concrete supports were moving, I took it apart board by board, numbered each board, then reassembled it at my home about 1 mile down the road.
reworked it back to its original look, it has screen wire under the floor to keep mice out.

worked hard on it, but it was a part of my childhood and did not want it to just perish.

I added the small shed on the back, was not part of the original crib
note the old wagon in the shed, sideboards were short of the bed length by about 2 feet, purpose built, so you could start scooping, otherwise you had to throw out by hand until you had a hole, so you could start scooping.
a222068.jpg
 
As long as you were taking corn out of the wagon all winter and kept it under roof it should keep. No deeper than it would be air could still get to it. A wooden barge box would be the best but a small gravity wagon should still be ok. Mike
 
some cribs had a door on the roof that opened to shovel in most of the ones that i filled had a series of square doors
on the ridge that were filled with an elevator . one had a conveyor that ran the length of the crib in the roof and had
a board to divert the corn to one side or another. as for keeping the corn in the door some had a chute in the bottom
of the door that lifted up to take the corn out till you could get enough out. to open the door . personally i wouldnt
do it that way the the corn slides down and you cant get the door shut and the doors get twisted. most of the cribs i
filled had 1x2s angled up at a 45 degree angle in the door way with 1x4s or 1x6s layed cross ways in the door way that
way you could just start at the bottom an lift out one board at a time to let out as much corn as needed without
spilling out a whole pile on the ground
 
That is cute. Would work nice for you.

The should be a manhole in the roof, other side, or they just shingled over flat when they reroofed it?

Paul
 
Our old wood crib was a bit bigger than the one pictured. It had openings along one wall just below the eaves and you had to pitch the corn through them to fill the crib.
I remember as a 4 year old trying to help dad and getting more corn on the ground than through the openings.
 

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