Russ' Vintage Iron

A couple months ago, I wrote about seeing vintage harvesting equipment at an outdoor farm shows in late summer/early fall. Someone had a fully restored International 303 combine on display at the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, and at Husker Harvest Days in Nebraska, an individual had an Oliver tractor with an Oliver corn picker mounted on it.

One of our regular contributors over the years sent me an email detailing his experience with picking corn. Here is his story.

"When I was about 20 years old (fifty years ago) I worked for a man at Fairview, S.D. He had an Oliver 2H picker, which had to be the biggest mounted, two-row picker I ever saw.

"We mounted it on an 1850 Oliver. The 1850 had a wide front end so we spent one day changing the front end to a narrow front end and the next day mounting the picker.

"We picked corn from about the second week of October until about December 1st. I remember he asked if I would work on Thanksgiving Day morning as we were way behind. There was snow on the ground I remember.

"At home, we had a mounted Case picker, I have forgotten the number. We first mounted it on a Case DC and then for several years it was mounted on a low profile Case 830.

"Picking corn was hard work often done in inclement weather but at the time I enjoyed it very much."

Bob Fitch

Hudson, S.D.

Thanks to Bob for another interesting story. I pretty much missed out on harvesting corn with corn pickers. I remember my dad and uncle putting the old John Deere 227 picker on the 4010 and picking some ear corn for cattle feed. This was the very late 1970s and that marked the last time they picked corn in the ear.

Bob's assessment that picking corn was hard work, often done in the snow and cold, but seemingly enjoyed by most at the time is a view I think many folks who picked corn did have. I have listened to the corn-picking told by my dad, uncle and their farmer friends and that seemed to be their general opinion, also.

Of course, none of them pick any corn in the ear today, so obviously they did not enjoy it enough to continue doing it! I am guessing having a cab attached to a combine probably had something to do with it.

During my dad's younger years, the family milked cows and harvest was often a fairly slow process. It is hard to get much harvesting done in the course of a day when you have to start your day milking cows early in the morning, start picking corn at mid-morning at the earliest and then have to stop in mid-afternoon to prepare to milk again in the late afternoon/early evening, my Dad is quick to point out.

He said he can remember picking corn in the snow and cold of mid-December a few years early in his farming career. The corn picking process slows down considerably with freezing temps and snow on the ground.

The dairy cows became beef cows and the mounted picker was replaced by the combine during my childhood. There were not many years we ever harvested corn that late in November, let alone December.

Not farming that many acres, we were always done harvesting by Thanksgiving -- until a few years back. I believe most everyone remembers 2009, a year in which extremely wet crops slowed harvest into the next spring in many places.

Every once in a while in my travels across the Midwest I will come across a farm with an ear corn bin full of bright yellow ears. There are still some out there who embrace the vintage way of harvesting corn.

(CZ)

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