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What's corn shucking?

R

rrlund

Well-known Member
I've been farming all my life,and for the life of me,I can't answer this question. What is corn shucking? Is it some kind of a regional term? If so,what region? The only place I ever hear it is on television. I've seen everything from shocks to husks refered to as shucks,and everything from husking to shelling refered to as shucking.
Whatever it is,it must have to be done by hand doesn't it? I've seen corn binders,pickers,shellers,choppers,huskers,shredders,grinders,even roller mills and burr mills,but never a machine called a shucker.
Maybe it's like cow tipping,something they only do in the city. I've never seen the YouTube video,but evidently there are some big city cows somewhere that sleep standing up and you can walk up and tip them over. But,that's a subject for another day.
 
Farming all your life must be a short while. In the thirties that was the only way to harvest corn. My mother went to the field with dad and worked alongside of him to harvest their corn. I was tiny then and they sat me in a horse collar in the back of the wagon. I guess you could say I helped too How about that for baby-sitting?
 
I would think they are either refering to husking or are mispronouncing shock and refering to a corn binder.
That or the have no clue because someone tipped a cow onto them when the were a child!
 
I haven't seen the video either but tipping cows is rolling them over when they are laying down. Of course they cannot get their feet under them so they can't get up.
 
My dad once told me that his brother was one of the fastest guys around shucking corn but the problem was that he missed the wagon a lot when he threw them in. :eek:)
 
Well here in Indiana shucking corn meant taking the wagon to the corn field and shucking a load of corn or to take the ear out of the shuck and toss on the wagon,some used shucking pegs some didn't.We used to shuck a load before school and another one after school,wasn't much of a problem with me having 4 brothers and 2 sisters.
 
Gotta admit,I've only been farming a little better than 40 years. Where are you that it was refered to as shucking,that's all I want to know?Not being a smart alec or anything. Around here,everything was fed to livestock,so it was put up in shocks then either run through the shredder or was husked by hand.
Just confusing on television. On the Beverly Hillbillies,Mrs Drysdale refered to shocks as "shucks". On Pawn Stars,somebody was trying to sell them a hand corn sheller and they called it a shucker. Said it "shucked" the corn. I know getting to the bottom of something is called "shucking down to the cob",but is it husking with such intensity that you even take the corn off the cob,or is it shelling? I'm getting a headache from trying to figure it out.
 
"Shucking" corn does indeed refer to harvesting corn, primarily by hand in the "good ol' days". It means removing the "shuck" (or husk,if you prefer) from the ear of corn. Farmers often had a "shucking" or husking "peg", which was a leather sort of glove with a 1" (or so) long hook on it to start the removal of the shuck from the ear.

The horses did not need driving, as they would respond to "gee" or "haw", depending on which way you wanted them to turn...don't ask me which way those each of those terms meant, as I never could remember.

Before we got a corn picker in 1943, Dad was able to shuck a couple of acres a day, which yielded a couple of wagonloads. He'd pull the wagon into the barn or next to the crib and shovel the corn into the crib. The second load of the day was normally unloaded after supper, which you may know as "dinner".

A friend of mine used to say, "Where I come from, stock's in the field, engineers drive trains and dinner's at noon".

This was in central Indiana, so I don't know if the term "shucking" was used in other areas or not...I suspect it was.

Stan
 
My Amish friends harvest all there corn that way now yet, no pickers. The only way they don't is if they cut the corn with a binder and haul directly to the stationary siler filler that is a combination of chopper and blower. The shucking is removing the ear without the husk on and throwing the ears into a flat bed wagon with low sideboard on one side and a 3' or more higher sideboard called a bang board on the other side and the ears thrown on the wagon by hand. The bangboard is to keep the ears from going of the opposide of the wagon. A good shucker can do a bushel a minute. I never got good at schucking but most of my schucking was husking and putting in a pile every 20-25' to go back later with a wagon to pickup in opening up the fields for the 1 row pull type corn picker. I have picked many a acre with those 1 row pickers and also cut many a acre with a 1 row corn binder but our corn was put in shocks and later ran thru a corn shreader, fodder for cow feed.
 
(quoted from post at 16:01:19 12/03/10) I've been farming all my life,and for the life of me,I can't answer this question. What is corn shucking? Is it some kind of a regional term? If so,what region? The only place I ever hear it is on television. I've seen everything from shocks to husks refered to as shucks,and everything from husking to shelling refered to as shucking.
Whatever it is,it must have to be done by hand doesn't it? I've seen corn binders,pickers,shellers,choppers,huskers,shredders,grinders,even roller mills and burr mills,but never a machine called a shucker.
Maybe it's like cow tipping,something they only do in the city. I've never seen the YouTube video,but evidently there are some big city cows somewhere that sleep standing up and you can walk up and tip them over. But,that's a subject for another day.
Click to expand...
Corn shucking is the harvesting of corn by hand. It was the primary way of harvesting until after WW2. Shucking 100 bushel a day was an art and a measure of manliness. After the war mechanical pickers were in the ascendency until about 1960 when they were replaced by combines with corn heads.
 
In my part of the rural Mid-South, corn was "pulled" by hand; "We're gonna pull a couple of loads of corn this morning." Team of mules with a wagon and (optimally) 3 people. Six rows at-a-pass, 2 on each side and 2 behind the wagon. I came along on the tail end of the era and always got/had to pull the 'down' rows. It was tough on your back, though kids were said not to have a backbone and it didn't hurt 'em to stay bent over for hours at a time. The shucks were left on the ears. "Shucking" (removing the shucks)was done at the crib and only what was gonna be fed or ground that day was shucked. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
 
One grandma from Missouri, other from South Dakota. Both referred to removing the husk from the ear as "shucking". I'm in Washington, and have never heard any other meaning to the term.

Cutting whole plant off and putting in a bundle is "shocking". Pulling the ear off the plant is "picking". Removing the kernals from the ear is "shelling".
 
they mite not be able to get on their feet but they can still kick the crap out of you.
 
it always meant removing husks in se Texas where i grew up
shocking is what happened when ya backed into one of them old homemade fencers built out of a 110volt hot wire and a light bulb
 
When I was a kid Dad bought both my brother and I husking pegs. Kind like a glove without fingers with a metal hook in the palm. We would husk the corn to open up a field to give room for the tractor and corm picker to work without knocking down a lot of corn. Dad would take two rows and my brother and I would each take one. tossing the clean ears in the wagon.

I would guess the term Shucking or Husking would be a whole bunch like calling the creek a crick. A lot of the time the difference would be confined to the four outside walls of ones house.
 
In deep NE Texas under extreme conditions, [b:654c4848f0][i:654c4848f0]shuckins[/i:654c4848f0][/b:654c4848f0] have been substituted for toilet paper.

Don't ask - Don't tell.
 
Shucking is done by hand and is removing the ear from the stalk in the field, We did it when I was a kid if it was to wet to get the picker in the field and we needed hog feed, we would take a tractor and wagon to the field, me and two brothers, three sisters and Dad would shuck a load by hand to feed hogs.
 
Elmer Carlson of Audubon, Iowa won the 1935 National Corn Husking Contest. See "When Farmers Were Heroes: The Era of National Corn Husking Contests."
 
I'm 58 and in SE Michigan where I grew up shucking was removing the husk from the ear, either on or off the stalk.
I have several husking pins. We used them on popcorn. And a corn sheller shelled corn not shucked.

Jerry
 
I agree with the dictionary and have never heard it used any other way except on these forums.

The husk on an ear of corn is also called a shuck. To remove it is therefore called shucking or husking.

A shuck can also be a pod or in the case of clams the clam shell, hence shucking clams.

Kansas fellow here where there isn't much corn grown in my old home area, but with dad and uncles and other relatives coming from Tennessee in the 1880s that is what influenced the term they used.
 
Maybe years back when the corn farmer told his kid to harvest the corn by hand, the kid said, "ah shucks, not again" and that's where the term shucking corn came from? Dave
 
Where I grew up shucking corn was removing the husk. Shelling corn was done by hand. We only did that to feed it to the chickesn. We picked corn by hand. Team of mules and a wagon. Did not use gee and haw with the wagon. Might use a few other words if they dicided to run. We used gee when plowing corn or tobacco. We plowed with the mule with one line to pull him away from the row. Gee put him closer to the row best I remember.
 
"Where I come from, stock's in the field, engineers drive trains and dinner's at noon "

Me to,we had Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper. My mother would ring the dinner bell and it sure wasnt at supper time. I still have trouble calling supper dinner
 
I think Flatt & Scruggs had a recording called "Shuckin' the Corn"!
I always called it corn shuckin, and my Grampaw and Uncles called it that, too!
 
2 boxes of cobs in the outhouse, 1 box red & 1 box white. Use 2 red cobs, then 1 white cob to see if ya need another red one.
 
I am from Indiana too. Before my time but my grandpa hand shucked corn and would sometimes compete in contests and win. When I was a kid they had new idea corn picker on a ih 706. They started shelling corn with a new 715 combine in 1975. For a couple of years they harvested both ways either shelling with combine or shucking with the corn picker.
 
When I was a kid, late '40s, early '50s, my dad and uncle harvested corn with a corn binder. It was a one row unit that cut and bundled the corn, stalks and all. Then they came through and stood the bundles in standing bunches called shocks.
They then transported the corn bundles to the barn where they were stored for further processing. As needed, the ears of corn were snapped off and husks removed by hand. This was called shucking or husking. Stalks were fed to livestock. Corn on cobs was taken to elevator in town, ane either ground, cob and all for cow feed, or shelled and ground for chicken and pig feed. I can still remember my dad huddled in the barn husking corn in the leaky, drafty ond barn in the coldest of the winter. He used a hand held tool called a husking peg. The tool was cradled in the hand with fingers through the leather loops. Thumb opposed the pointy end, which made it easy to grasp the husk and pull it off. We still have one around here somewhere.
husking peg
 
I barely remember a corn shucking at my grandparents home in the early 1950's in northwest piedmont North Carolina. Corn was piled on the ground near the crib after being picked by hand. I think it was a morning event with several neighbors invited to help -- perhaps more like a party. As I was under 5 yrs of age, my parents were surprised when I later mentioned remembering the event. Seems like I stayed in the kitchen with grandma who was busy baking.
Other accounts of corn shuckings in this area had connotations of a community party event, probably held in the late afternoon/early evening. While most corn was white grained, someone finding an ear of red (Indian) corn was entitled to a kiss.
On the farm where I grew up the barn had a first floor area called the "shuck pen" and the corn crib was a separate building several feet away. (Crib was restored last year by a nephew; barn burned in an afternoon thunderstorm several years ago!) My understanding, corn pulled by hand could be piled on the ground for a short while without much damage while the moisture content dropped. Shucks were removed and stored in the shuck pen to be fed to the cows in the winter. Ears of corn were stored in the crib and fed to the horses. By the time I came along, dad still picked much of his corn by hand (small fields), and put it in the crib, shuck and all. Shoveled it later into the pickup and had it ground for cow feed at the local mill. The shuck pen was used for square baled hay.
 
The horses did not need driving, as they would respond to "gee" or "haw", depending on which way you wanted them to turn...don't ask me which way those each of those terms meant, as I never could remember

gee is right
haw is left
 
(quoted from post at 16:57:06 12/03/10) 2 boxes of cobs in the outhouse, 1 box red & 1 box white. Use 2 red cobs, then 1 white cob to see if ya need another red one.
Click to expand...

Yep same here in N.Texas. As far as the shucks are concerned they stayed on the ear and were put into the corn crib. Later corn, cob & shucks were ground in Winter for cattle feed.
 
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