Corn Farming on The Great Plains

[Delmonico]

In the Bonanza farming thread we covered  the large scale wheat farming of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century.  Not all wheat was grown that way, some of it was on a small scale, along with oats and rye.  But the real common crop for the small farmer was corn.  This thread is dedicated to corn farming on The Great Plains.  It also seems that large scale corn farming would not come about till later in the 20th century.  Most of the pictures are out of both the F.A. Pazandak and the Solomon Butcher collections and were picked to best illustrate the methods used.

Just like  wheat or any other type of farming, one must first till the ground, small scale farming did not make large traction engines practical so the plowing was done by horses, mules or oxen as this 1907 picture in the F.A. Pazandak collection shows:



The next pictures are also from the same collection and are most likely early Bonanza wheat farming related by the amount of teams in the pictures, but are very good pictures showing both walking and riding plows:





The plowed field was then disced:



Sometimes the seed was planted by hand with a hoe, but most often was planted with mechanical planters as in these two pictures from the Butcher Collection.  The first is of a check-row planter, similar to the grain drill used for wheat:



The second is a lister, which planted the seed deeper and was used in the more drier regions:



Often the field was planted right up to the house as these two Butcher photo's show:





Those who are familiar with modern hybrid field corn, take a close look at the plants in the second picture, more on this later.

The next three pictures are from the Butcher Collection are simply show corn fields:






Note the telephone lines in the above picture taken around the turn of the century.

The corn was picked in the fall.  The mechanical corn picker was not perfected till around WWI and was still not popular till close to WWII.  The hand picking was one reason corn was not grown on large scale farms like wheat.  Wheat however has a window that it has to be picked that is often not much more than a week and it is also more easily damaged by storms.  Corn on the other hand sometimes was not picked till late winter or even in some years till early spring.  This would involve some loss of crop, but not enough most times that the whole crop would be lost like small grains.

The two ways corn was picked was either one would walk through the field and pick the corn by hand and toss it into a wagon or as this photo shows, the stalks were cut and shocked like wheat and then picked later.





Either way the corn had the husk split with a device worn on the hand called a husking peg:



The corn ears were then tossed into a wagon with the off side being higher than the close side:



This was called a bang board from the noise the corn made when it hit it.

The unshelled corn was often stored to be shelled later in a corn crib, this allowed it to dry better than if it was shelled right away and stored.  The nest picture shows the latest methods used to store the corn in the corn crib and is from the Butcher Collection:



Some cribs were of a more temporary construction:



The building in the back ground is a corn crib on one side and grain storage on the other.  The grain could be shelled corn or could be wheat or oats:


The corn had to be removed from the cob, this was sometimes done by hand cranked corn shellers as these two seen in a couple of Butchers photo's:





And a better image of a similar one I found with a quick search:





Some larger shellers were horse powered as this one from the Butcher Collection::



And some used steam traction engines, stationary engines or internal combustion tractors:



Note the above traction engine is quite small compared to those in the Bonanza Farming thread.  Also note smoke drawn on the negative by Butcher.

On a final note, I mentioned the corn that looked different than modern hybrid corn.  The next two pictures show corn in pictures taken by Butcher at county fairs.  This would of course be examples of the best corn in the county.  Also not some of the ears apear to have red kernals, not uncommon in the era:



Close up of part of the above picture:



And another one:



One will also note the large piles of cobs in some of the pictures, these were used as fuel and sometimes also as a substitute for gravel for driveways and roads.

[JimBob]

Great pictures Delmonico,thanks for posting.There's still a lot of those big double cribs for ear corn around this part of Illinois although they are slowly disappearing as age and neglect take there toll on them.Good pics of the hand corn sheller,I picked one up at a sale awhile back for $2,missing the feed trough at top so now I see what I need to make.

Corn cobs,LOL, yes indeed they had a lot of uses after the corn was shelled.Ground in with the feed to stretch it a little,replacement stoppers for those lost corks in the jugs,homemade smoking pipes,excellent ammunition for cob fights,fire starters and for burning out old pots and skillets,short fires in the stove,and the maybe ultimate use as a replacement for the Sears-Roebuck catalog in the little house out back.

The temporary crib is interesting,when did that type of fencing become generally available?I remember Grandad had a temporary crib made out of split rails,moved it around to hold ear corn for the cattle feed as he changed pasturage.

[Delmonico]

The temporary crib is interesting,when did that type of fencing become generally available?I remember Grandad had a temporary crib made out of split rails,moved it around to hold ear corn for the cattle feed as he changed pasturage.

I'm not sure, I haven't been able to track it down but I found it in a Butcher photo around a sod house and the date was in the 1880's.  Would be interested in knowing.

[JimBob]

I'm not sure, I haven't been able to track it down but I found it in a Butcher photo around a sod house and the date was in the 1880's.  Would be interested in knowing.

A little quick googling,a machine capable of producing this type fencing was patented in 1854 by John Nesmith.Later on in the 1870s and 80s there were machines capable of producing it on site.Here's an interview of a gentleman born in 1878 on the subject http://avbarn.museum.state.il.us/viewclip/1191 If you click on his name he was interviewed extensively about farming in the late 1800s and early 1900s.Although he was in Illinois life on the farm was pretty much the same in many respects on the midwest prairie and in Nebraska and other plains states.

[Montanashooter]

Very interesting and very informative.  At times in past years grain prices have been same per bushel as in the 40s Ive been told though farming had evolved a lil by then in more modern terms the amount of work taken to get a bushel or corn or wheat was signifacantly more then now.   Grains yielded lower and took prob 200  times more labor  to produce and bring to market  then now.  I have always felt fortunate that growing up i was around some of the farm equipment of the 50s and 60s and methods that farm kids now prob know nothing about like corn pickers, shellers, old long gone tractors companies slide stackers roto balers... 

[Delmonico]

A little quick googling,a machine capable of producing this type fencing was patented in 1854 by John Nesmith.Later on in the 1870s and 80s there were machines capable of producing it on site.Here's an interview of a gentleman born in 1878 on the subject http://avbarn.museum.state.il.us/viewclip/1191 If you click on his name he was interviewed extensively about farming in the late 1800s and early 1900s.Although he was in Illinois life on the farm was pretty much the same in many respects on the midwest prairie and in Nebraska and other plains states.

Thanks, I was at a loss because I could not think of the proper name for it.

[Delmonico]

Very interesting and very informative.  At times in past years grain prices have been same per bushel as in the 40s Ive been told though farming had evolved a lil by then in more modern terms the amount of work taken to get a bushel or corn or wheat was signifacantly more then now.   Grains yielded lower and took prob 200  times more labor  to produce and bring to market  then now.  I have always felt fortunate that growing up i was around some of the farm equipment of the 50s and 60s and methods that farm kids now prob know nothing about like corn pickers, shellers, old long gone tractors companies slide stackers roto balers... 

My folks moved to town when I was less than a year old, but have also spent a lot of time around farms.  The changes in the last 50 years are amazing.  The yields per acre for irrigated corn and it's hybrids just for than are nothing short of amazing.

[Delmonico]

A quick search showed this up, from Indiana but the results would be similar:



BTW a bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds shelled.

[JimBob]

There was a time,and not that long ago as your chart illustrates,getting a 100 bushel an acre corn was really something.

[Tascosa Joe]

Del: 
Great photos.  I am curious about the picture with the conveyor moving ear corn into the barn/grainery.  What was the power source?  Possibly the team of gray horses?
Joe

[Delmonico]

Del: 
Great photos.  I am curious about the picture with the conveyor moving ear corn into the barn/grainery.  What was the power source?  Possibly the team of gray horses?
Joe

A better look, I'd say the second wagon is in the way in the picture, but I'd also say it was put there for photographic effect:

[JimBob]

There's a sucker rod running out from the hiker at that one team's feet,looks like the wagon is blocking the motive power for the hiker.

[Delmonico]

There's a sucker rod running out from the hiker at that one team's feet,looks like the wagon is blocking the motive power for the hiker.

But the picture looks pretty that way, here's the set-up on the shelling picture:

[Delmonico]

Here is the other picture with the woven picket fence:



J.C. Cram sod house, Loup County, Nebraska. 1886

[Stu Kettle]

There's a sucker rod running out from the hiker at that one team's feet,looks like the wagon is blocking the motive power for the hiker.

I'm guessing its a gasoline engine, the kind we generally call a "well motor" around these parts.  you can make out the skid it sets on behind the wagon parked there to hide it.

[Delmonico]

I'm guessing its a gasoline engine, the kind we generally call a "well motor" around these parts.  you can make out the skid it sets on behind the wagon parked there to hide it.

I never looked that close, but there is something behind the wagon, I thought they were using horse power and had just moved stuff around to photo better:



The date on the photo is 1909 and they were starting to be common by then.

This one is bailing hay in 1905:





It's a larger one, but they came in all sizes. 

I know them as hit and miss engines, this video explains them pretty good:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/howstuffworks/183-how-hit-and-miss-engines-work-video.htm

Here's a few I've seen run:



This big one runs on propane but ran on natural gas when it pumped oil down in Kansas:



In the next picture it's thinking about it:



And then it gets the job done:



We have one stored at the farm, a smaller one, a project for me some day.

[Tascosa Joe]

thanks for the great photos. 

[Stu Kettle]

We have one stored at the farm, a smaller one, a project for me some day.

I've wanted one for a long time, they're always my favorite at a local fair or harvest festival. I like the ones that miss more than they hit the best   Found one once that was still at work filling a stock tank every day & asked the owner about it, next thing I knew he had it all painted up & crushing beer cans at the fair.

[Delmonico]

If you put enough load on them they'll hit most every time.  Ours is a Rock Island of about 1 HP, it was last run in the 1960's, it is in the barn and covered and is still free.  When I'm down around the the barn with a can of WD-40 I uncover it and spray it down.

[Delmonico]

Her's one set up to sharped discs: