OT: Antiques Picking Corn in Nebraska PIC

Sunday the neighbors got together and finished off the corn harvest with vintage equipment. Thought you might like to see the action.





I thought I put captions on the photo uploads, but they do not show in the post. The John Deere picker is a gas burner model 60 with a single front wheel. The other picker is an AC D17 also gas burner. The sheller tractor is another JD gas 60 with a factory wide front end, powering a MM sheller. The grain truck is a vintage 2 ton that has seen many miles, and hidden behind the raised wagon is a not-quite-as-old JD furnishing hydraulic power to the wagon. Neighbors also brought a Farmall F-20 (not pictured) to give rides to the kids. Glad you enjoy the pics.

We didn't even have that for picking corn. They shocked it and husked it by hand. That's why my brother joined the Air Force and I was drafted during the Korean War. Hal

Boy I can remember doing corn picking like that. I like the picture of the AC 190 mounted picker. My neighbor had one on a D19 Diesel and it was a good picker. Not one you could push much,trash could pile up on top of the snapping units and would be on top of the operator real fast if he never kept an eye on it. Best picker I ever had was a Ford mounted on my D17.Worst was a Case pull type with a side elevator.When corn started to exceed 130 Bu.per acre I always ran out of crib room so we set up some snow fence round cribs out in the field and shelled them out with a King & Hamilton sheller which was set up on a KB7 IHC.The old IHC had a straight pipe which came up thru the hood and was about 6' tall. You could not hear around that power house.Shelling time was a good neighbor time ,Every body pitched in from farm to farm.All the women went into a competition mode to see what the shellers thought was the best set table except for my good friend and neighbor to the east of us.His wife died young and he had no one to take her place so he had the local restaurant cater his meals he furnished.The self propelled combine ended the neighborlieness it seemed. Land grabbers were another factor in the demise of the family farm.Our family farm now is run by a Farm Manger and farmed by a cash renter and is just another number on the SWCD map. Some of my sisters have not visited the farm in 20 years,a couple have their Lawyer pick up the yearly dividend check and they [the lawyers] argue with the Manager which makes communication with him by the rest of us dicey at times.I had 8 sisters and 3 brothers,

I'm few days from being 48 (16th) and remember running a Farmall M with an International mounted picker when I was maybe 12. I liked it much better then the New Idea pull behind picker. Made more sense to me to have it mounted and drive right down through the corn.

I saw quite a lot of different corn harvesting equipment in my time (1942-1958). First thing I remember was a McCormick-Deering 1 row ground drive binder that cut the corn and bundled it which was then shocked in the field or sent to the McCormick-Deering ensilage cutter at the silo. The shocked corn dried a week or three in the field and then was hauled to the barn where it was run through a Rosenthal 40 Husker-shredder, the ear corn going to a crib for storage and eventual feed use for all the animals and the fodder into a mow in the barn to be used for feed and bedding for the milk cows. In a few years a new McCormick-Deering 2 row PTO binder was used just as the previous 1 row binder had been, but it was a definate improvement. A few years of that line of equipment and it was all traded for a new Gehl Field Forage Chopper to chop corn or haylage and Blower to fill the silos with and a No. 24 McCormick 2 row mounted picker to harvest the ear corn with. After 4-5 years of using this picker on the '50 Farmall H, a used No. 2ME 2 row picker was bought and used on the Super MTA. I still like to see any of this old style equipment in use...even though there was quite a lot of manual labor used too to run it and get the corn harvested. The combining operation now used is pretty simple and doesn't use nearly as much labor

Hal,

The farmer that my family worked for and owned the place where we lived back in the late 40's early 50's was very modern in some respects, but for whatever reason, still shocked corn and husked it by hand. I sat for many hours with him and my dad in the top of his dairy barn husking corn.

I guess everyone had them, but we had some leather "gloves" that went on our right hands that had a hook embedded in it. We'd hold the ear with our left hand, and make one pass down the ear with the hooked right hand to split the husk, then pull the husk back and twist it off the ear.

The stalks and husks were then run through a chopper to make fodder to make some of the food that the cows ate during the winter.

It didn't seem too romantic at the time, but the further I get away from it, the fonder my memories are of doing it.

Tom in TN

Yes. Thank you. Very nice.
Do you know what the picking tractors are?
Late D17 diesel? 60?

Thanks for the questions. I edited the main post, and here is the same info.

I thought I put captions on the photo uploads, but they do not show in the post. The John Deere picker is a gas burner model 60 with a single front wheel. The other picker is an AC D17 also gas burner. The sheller tractor is another JD gas 60 with a factory wide front end, powering a MM sheller. The grain truck is a vintage 2 ton that has seen many miles, and hidden behind the raised wagon is a not-quite-as-old JD furnishing hydraulic power to the wagon. Neighbors also brought a Farmall F-20 (not pictured) to give rides to the kids. Glad you enjoy the pics.

Thanks for the pictures. While you're on the subject, do any of you know what happened to the book that was suppose to be ready on March 1, 2011 at www.cornpickerbook.com? They seem to have deserted their site and it still says the book is going to be ready last March.

Looks like a nice day. Is that Bill Grounds on the AC?

Thanks again.
Gas D17???????????- would have exhaust on left side. Intake also looks like diesel.

I think it's a diesel
Untitled URL Link

AC picker
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