Corn Harvest by Hand

"Such a great pile of fine big ears of
corn shows that this farmer selected
his seed for planting with great care."
-- from Geography for Beginners,
Rand McNally and Company, 1923.

The corn harvest is underway in Christian County. I noticed yesterday that one lane of the highway was heavily speckled with yellow corn kernels at an intersection. I suppose the corn spilled out of an overloaded truck as it swung around the corner. The farmer in this photo would have swept up every kernel if that had been his precious, hand-harvested crop lying on the road.

Before mechanized corn pickers, farmers removed the corn from the corn stalks by hand. There were a couple of methods. At harvest time, the farmer could walk the rows of corn, pull off the ears, husk them, and toss them into a wagon. Corn harvested in this way was stored in well-ventilated bins ("corn cribs") to allow it to finish drying. Or, the farmer could cut down the cornstalks, gather them into shocks, and at a later date, pull the dried ears off the stocks and husk them. The farmer in the photo is following Plan B.

This photo came from a book that was copyrighted in 1923. By then, most farmers would have owned or been able to hire a binder -- a machine that cut the cornstalks and bound them into sheaves (small bundles.) Then the farmer gathered the sheaves of cornstalks and stood them together in shocks (larger bundles.) After some additional weeks of drying in the shocks, the ears of corn were then safe to bring to a barn or granary for storage.

The hard labor of planting, tending, and harvesting a crop was well understood in 1874 when Knowles Shaw wrote the Gospel harvest song, "Bringing in the Sheaves." He based it on Psalm 126:6: "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."