Corn-picking weather

Cold. Dry. Hard. Windy. There was no comfort riding on a load of corn cobs on a November day.

But apparently we kids did it anyway. The rides out to the field and back were quick. And all that glossy dented corn was glorious yellow on the bleak landscape. The cobs slid around. It was exciting.

Out in the field, a tractor pulled the corn picker, felling the straw-colored stalks, snagging the big cobs and shooting them back onto a wagon. Another tractor driver ferried empty wagons to the field and brought full wagons back home. There the cobs were shoveled onto a narrow elevator that deposited them into red, wood-slatted corn cribs. The wind could continue to do its work, drying them out.

Corn picking was the last harvest of the season. Getting the corn in as dry as possible was the goal. If the weather was wet and tractors couldn't get into the fields, the quality of the crop eroded. Some years, we had to wait until the ground froze to bring the last of it in.

Dad must have taken this photo. He had stopped the tractor and wagon next to our house, probably to run in for a glass of water or a Band-Aid or an extra layer of clothing. He must have tossed my favorite cat up to me, more to keep it out of the tractor's path than anything—that cat did not ride all the way to the field and back! Then Dad grabbed his camera on the way out of the house.

The view is southeast. Behind the wagon are our three little birch trees, with two ash trees on the left. My shadow was falling north, so it was midday.

Gayla and a cat on the corn load, Marty farm, about 1962. Photo by Gordon Marty.

Comments

[Ruth]

Such precious, and hard work, memories here. And that photo! What a treasure.