Corn Cobs.........

When my father was in the farming business many years ago, he would have never dreamed of seeing cobs laying on the ground after he picked the corn.  He had a one row corn picker that picked the corn and it dropped it into a wagon in the back of the picker.  The picker had a little elevator device that would take it up like an escalator to the top of the trough and then it would drop into the wagon that was attached to the back of the tractor.  The corn never saw a sheller, it kept its kernels on the cob except for when they would rub together and a few kernels would fall away from the cob. Selling shelled corn meant hiring a man to come to the farm and to run your corn through a sheller so the farmer could sell it as shelled corn. 

Today's combines have wide front pieces that take in many rows of corn at a time and then it goes through a sheller built right on the machine. The loose corn kernels would be augered into a bin that eventually would be full, requiring it to be unloaded into a waiting wagon or a large truck.  Some farmers have another man drive an empty wagon next to the combine while it is picking. The hopper full of corn is unloaded into the wagon while moving and the progress of the picking is not interrupted.

The cobs are discharged out the back along with all the stalk waste now and when you walk the field you seen corn cobs everywhere.  The healthier the cobs the better the harvest must be. As I looked out across the field it looks like devastation of the earth with only stubs sticking up in the air and loose stalk material and cobs in the rows. Last year the farmer hired another farmer to bale up the stalks into large bails.  We will wait to see if that happens again this year.