Corn Crib Question

I see a lot of older double ear corn cribs with a center alley in Eastern Iowa corn country. They have a cupola on top and probably had a bucket elevator system. My question is, once the ear corn was elevated how did it get sent to the cribs on each side? A chute on each side from the bucket elevator to feed the cribs? Or could you spread the corn out more with a movable chute so you could fill a crib evenly. If anyone has a crib like that and could post some internal pictures, I'd appreciate it.

They probably didn't have a bucket system we got them in eastern Nebraska and you fill them with couple holes in the roof

i still have a crib like that at the other farm. the bucket elevator is still there, but the chain is broke. it has a wagon jack in the drive, basically a winch that comes down from the ceiling to lift the wagon to dump it. there are chutes in the coupola to direct the crop. mine has bins over the center drive thru for beans, oats or wheat. next time im over there i will climb up and get some pictures.

As I recall (after 50 years), the driveway had a center driveway where you brought the wagons through and had a mechanical lift to dump the wagons. Kinda think there was a "Speed Jack" to power the "elevator" to get the ear corn to the top of the crib and it just kinda "settled" in from there!
Any body remember shelling corn out of a crib?

HEY - Can I come up to the secret meeting ??*****

Sure do remember. Was the highlight of the summer.

shelled a lot of corn out of cribs. tie yer pantlegs shut with sissal twine to keep rats and mice out of yer pantlegs. the neighbors had the sheller, and most of the neighbors showed up to help who ever was shelling. moving the drags was heavy work. used 4 tine rakes to pull the ears into the drags, and a grain shovel to slow the ears down when they got to running. the guys that had the sheller bought an ear corn auger to pull the ears into the drags, boy that was the berries!!!! the cob truck would be there to haul off the cobs, and the husk wagon hauled the chaff out to the burn pile. iirc, they had a john deere sheller mounted on a truck. wire cribs were easier to shell!!!

cmon up, coffe tomorrow at the shop at 7:15!!!

Aw, too early can you be here by 9 AM ?? 😀

My father in law in EC IL still has 3 he fills. THe elevator takes the grain or ear corn to the top, and then an adjustable chute directs the grain or ear corn to the appropriate location. His have 3 or 4 granary bins over the center drive, and of course the ear corn on each side.

Been up there to re-arrange things in the past, it is always a fun climb. I may have some pictures somewhere.

Where I was Raised in North Central Ohio they usually has a drop down door at the top of the crib, lots of times the full length of the crib. We just shoveled ear corn out of barge wagon into the crib. Then shoveled it out of the crib back into the wagon to go to the sheller. I thought I was born with a #14 grain scoop on the end of my arms!! Round cribs were a lot easier.

Well if you get up by the Bagley area sometime come on over and I can give you a tour of ours! I posted pics of it a couple years ago but can't seem to get them back or find them.

The bucket elevator dropped the corn in a spout or funnel, if you want to call it that in the middle of the crib, then it slid down an extendable chute that could be rotated any direction. Usually the chute had three extensions that slid inside each other to telescope, sometimes four if it was a long crib. The chutes were usually half chutes with an open top. When the chute was extended all the way the angle flattened and sometimes damp shucky corn didn't want to slide well. That's when we got out the car wax.

The elevator could have been a bucket elevator in the fancier cribs. If there was no inside elevator an outside elevator was stuck through a door in the side of the cupola. A lot of times the elevator stayed there year round because it was quite a job backing the elevator through that little door way up there with the elevator swaying side to side. And the elevator was hand cranked to raise it. The arms and stamina were tested by the time the elevator was at full height. I can still remember the whomp, whomp, whomp sound of the corn coming out of the buckets or elevator flights and hitting the tin chute.

My job as a kid was to go upstairs in the crib when it was getting full and kick corn out into the far ends of the crib as it was coming down the chute. When I ran out of room or energy, whichever happened first, I had to be quick to get back to the cupola door to wave to the guy unloading the wagon to stop. Our 80 year old neighbor, god bless him, would be down there unloading the wagon but he never looked up to see if I was waving. I'd wave and wave, then scurry back down to the end of the spout to kick more corn so the spout that was now backed up to the top, could empty, then I'd go back to the cupola door and frantically wave again. I'd even throw ears of corn at him out of desperation. Sometimes I could get back down the ladder in time to run around the crib and stop the elevator before it plugged. Sometimes I was too late. (Sigh). Man, that was fifty years ago already. Where does the time go! I'm sure many of you midwesterners can tell the same story. LOL

In winter with snow on the ground The old double wide crib was the only place we could get traction to pull start the F-4 with the stock rack on to haul a load of hogs. Stupid flat head would only start in fair weather so we pulled it through the crib. Round and round through the crib until finally it started. Caught the mirror on the side once. It was kinda narrow. Funny we did not catch the mirror more often.

My husband filled our cribs through a hole in the roof on each side of the crib which was capped when not in use. I'm thinking he just climbed inside the crib to shovel a bit if needed for leveling - and that was only a little at the end because the ears actually seemed to "flow" fairly decently out to the edges of the crib.

The alley way between our cribs just seemed to be for machinery storage... there was no evidence that it ever had any kind of lift system in there.

Farm I was raised on had large crib with inside bucket elevator. Each side held 4000 bu ear corn, 6 overhead bins down the middle held 2000 bu small grain each. Had Letz Burr Mill in it but had to power with belt to the Super M. No lift, had hoists on our wagons.

Dad built a new one in 51 had the "pit" in the center of the crib for the sheller drag. Long crib on one side and two short one on the other space between the two short ones for the hammer mill belt powered blew ground feed up over head to self emptying bins one had spouts going down to the enclsed side fedding floor to fill th feeders other bin unloaded back in driveway for loadout to fill feeders in the field in the summer time and we had hogs out on pasture several places. Scoped thousands of ground corn into the feeders out in the field then go back and grind some more.Ground feed at least two times a week yr around. Had single wire cribs next to cattle feeding lots when a pickup mounted grinder would come and grind out of the crib and the auger moved the ground feed into a bin where we would basket feed the fat steers. Loved the hand feeding as you always had one or more that always needed special scratching around the ears ect as they ate. Those days are gon but the memories will never be. Crib cost 11,000 and Dad said the last bunch of fat cattle had paid for it. Crib is now gone and 30x40 shed for hay storage now covers the area.

Tyson chicken used to send a crew around and they would shell your corn for the cobs, they ground the cobs and used as chicken house bedding, now they use rice hulls in our part of the world.

Bagley isn't too far away. Email is open if you want to provide some contact info. Thanks.

Ours was the same. We had a loft between them that we usually kept straw in. Later on when dad bought a grinder-mixer the alley made a practical place for it to store in. gm

the buckets dumped into a chute system, those were extendable and several covered that side of the crib, if the corn was too wet and the chute was too shallow you had to stand there on planks that ran thru the rafters with gloves on and "help" the ears slide down

We stored our mixer in the same spot.

Kind of miss those days sometimes of raising crops and hogs... then again, glad life is not so hectic.

I grew up on a farm with one similar, but had no cupola. Dad had made a chute that would swivel when clamped onto the head of the elevator. the elevator was shoved in under the center roof and filled the cribs to the side. In 1974 a new crib was erected. It was narrow and tall with a door on one end only. Unlike the squat double sided crib that was before it.

It seems that style of crib was common south of Renville, McLeod, and Carver counties. From there it stretched into southern MN and Iowa. It is interesting to look at the design of farm buildings in certain areas and try to understand the reason behind the way it is built and the materials used. In Stearns, Meeker, and Pope counties you would be hard pressed to find a crib with that style of Cupola.

yea i did what you did, later converted crib to hold soybeans. ran chute upstairs to top off
the sides, up, down ladder, i doubt i could fit the ladder excess hole NOW!!!! OH ITS NICE TO
JUST GET THE RENT MONEY NOWDAYS, and be profitable every year now.

Thanks for all of the info. My reason for asking is that I put up a double corn crib with the center alley several years ago for ear corn. My original design on the roof was three hatches down each side above each crib area for filling using an elevator. Unfortunately with the steel roof there is leakage around the top of each hatch (water piles up above the hatch and gets in around the flashing). I'm going to rework the roof to either use three hatches along the roof line or a central cupola setup; still filling using an elevator. I like the looks of the central cupola, but need to figure out a way to route the corn to allow more level filling along the length of the crib...thus my question. Two things are complicating the situation, the rafters I used have cross braces that don't give me a lot of open space above the cribs and one end of the left crib side is a granary for oats...so even if with a central cupola filling each crib side I would still need to be able to get oats to the granary at the end of that crib. Hopefully that description makes sense. Thought about reworking the rafters to get me more room above the cribs for swinging a chute around. Or just putting in a roofline hatch for the oats and use center cupola for corn. That way I wouldn't have to move the elevator during corn harvest.
Hindsight is always great...Would have gone with a gambrel hip roof for more upper space but oh well.

I have a pretty early one on my place, it has hatches on the roof on each side that I presume were filled by an elevator. There are doors low on the inside which was were they loaded out the corn. I need to take it apart as the foundation is falling and it's starting to collapse.

Your crib sounds almost exactly like Our crib! Same size, 4000 bu per side, Dad would cheat and fill up onto the roof a little years when corn yield was good. Kewanee inside bucket elevator with a feed drag built in the floor. Had a Stan-Hoist portable drive over wagon hoist when Grandpa helped pick, his WC Allis didn't have hyd remotes. When I got old enough to haul in, 11-12 years, the wagons all had hoists, backed them in. Had two overhead bins on north end of crib, and one bin on south end twice the size of the other bins. Combined they easily held 2000 bu. oats. Used a Knoedler Burr mill to grind earcorn and used a 4 inch by 20 ft Mayrath auger to move ground corn into walk-in cattle feeder. Normally ground on Saturday, especially when all the ear corn had to be scooped. The handle only fit MY hands.

All the corn was picked and ground for the cattle, all the feed for 500 to 800 head of hogs was bought complete from feed mill in town 5 miles away. In winter the mill delivered, when weather was warm enough to run the 5 miles both ways I picked it up in the Heider auger wagon pulled by tractor. (think mini-grain cart) It could haul 5000-6000#. My wages (free) and tractor gas at 7 mpg was much cheaper than the $1/ton the feedmill charged for delivery.

That old crib is still standing, not positive but assume it's empty and has been for decades. It even had a platform scale set in a pit on the south half of the floor. I guess it was intended to weigh cattle & hogs when shipped. As wagons and tractors got bigger and heavier the wood deck became suspect and not wanting to have a tractor or the BIG wagon to fall in, we backed them in on the side with solid concrete floor.

The much smaller crib on the other farm we farmed, maybe 2000 bushel, 1000 per side, no overhead bins is still standing but leaning at about a 10-15 degree angle, been empty since 1972. It was on 80 acres that was on continuous corn for close to 20 years, rest of the corn went in driveway of the BIG front barn, center aisle was 16 ft wide, 30 ft long, and cribbed up over 20 ft tall. Two guys, two mounted pickers, and two wagons picked that 80 acres normally in 2 days.

(quoted from post at 19:39:39 10/16/17) My father in law in EC IL still has 3 he fills. THe elevator takes the grain or ear corn to the top, and then an adjustable chute directs the grain or ear corn to the appropriate location. His have 3 or 4 granary bins over the center drive, and of course the ear corn on each side.

Been up there to re-arrange things in the past, it is always a fun climb. I may have some pictures somewhere.

Click to expand...

Coonie that sounds exactly like the crib on a farm site next to my Dad's field. It's a round red brick building with an alley in the middle. A bucket ladder brings the grain up to a chute that can be pointed into (I think about 7) compartments. The grain is stored above the alley and ear corn around the outside walls.


We still fill a round cement corn crib (about 3000 bu) that looks like a short silo with holes all around. It's kinda interesting filling it because we have to use a spout on the elevator to direct the corn away from the door. We can't just let it fill up in the center because the corn gets packed in the center and makes it hard to empty.

I wonder if you could eliminate the hatches and just attach small pieces of the steel roofing over the holes and fasten with screws, then you could remove the pieces for filling. I have a double crib here that was used that way , and another single crib where the whole ridge is open and covered with v-shaped ridge cap after filling.

If memory serves me right there are some cribs like that around Hutchinson MN.