O/T Shocking Corn

A few years ago, a farmer shocked all of his corn. Before it becomes a lost art, I'd like to learn how to do it. The web only has stuff if you want to decorate your porch. Can a few of you old-timers explain how to shock corn? This guy used some type of crossed boards and once the shock was bound, pulled the boards out.

Larry

I don't want to call myself an old timer, 58. but my dad and I shocked a lot of corn and cane. It is pretty simple. It was cut and bundled by our corn binder. We then went out and he would stand two bundles together and I would add the third. Like a tripod. You would then keep adding more bundles around this tripod. I don't recall how many bundles he would put into one shock but would build so big then go on to the next one. The thing I remember the most was they were usually froze to the ground when we went to load to feed cattle.

I'm far from an old timer, but when I was a kid, my dad showed me how they used to do it back in the day.

They would take 4 stalks in 2 rows, bend them over and twist them together crosways to make a little domed frame (kind of like a modern dome tent poles). I remember him telling me they could never build good shocks after the European Corn Borer arrived because the stalks would break instead of bend. Anyhoo, after that frame was made, you just cut and stand the stalks up to make your shock. He said a shock built that way would never blow over in the wind.

I make two shocks in our garden sweetcorn patch every fall just to keep the memory alive.... reminds me of dad everytime I do it. I was probably about 10 when he showed me.

That's pretty much the way I remember doing it, Tim.

When I raised a lot of sweet corn I made a big corn shock and let it dry then I used my Troy Bilt chipper/shredder to shred the fodder. I spreaded it over the garden and plowed it under.

When I was a teen back in the late 40's we were still cutting the field corn by hand and putting it in small shocks until dry then we husked it by hand. If there's was a hard way to do any work we did it. Guess that's one of the reasons my brother and I gave up a deferment to go in the military. Hal

My dad started farming on his own in 1934. He never ever shocked corn for any reason in those years but he did on his dads farm in Kentucky.He told stories to us kids at night[no TV yet} about his youth and shocking corn bundles was one of them.he had 2 brothers and 1 sister,Grand Dad had a IHC bundle machine and he would drive it down the row of corn and this machine would cut off as much corn as the cog gear was set for ,wrap a twine around it and dunp it on the ground.Then he and his brothers would bring 3 bundles to where my aunt was standing and stack them against the bundle she was holding up right.They continued this for about 15 bundles and then they took a peice of twine and wrapped it around the whole shock and tie it off. When the twine holding the shock together and they were brought in to strip the ears off or to run thru the Ensalage cutter to fill the silo there were a lot of short peices of twine laying around.These were put in a basket and taken to the house to start the morning fire in the cook stove with. Some of the shocks of corn were left in the field for storage but a lot of them that were not shucked or chopped were stacked around the house as a wind break from the cold country winter winds. some of this happened near the end of the Depression years so corn di not have a real lot of value but was used as feed and other things. grand dad would save the best ears back for next years seed and he also would shell out any red ears and hammer mill them for corn meal. Dad said he really liked his moms corn bread made with red corn meal.I was born in 1937 and missed all that, good thing my dad was a good story teller.I always said I was born 100 years too late.

You got it right. Whe I was little I use to help my dad. His Corn binder had a bundle carrier and he would dump so many bundle in a pile. this way he could sort of dump the piles in a rows so he would not have to carry them to far to build the shock. He alway carried a little pail wirh a ball of binder twine and a had a lite weight rope with a pulley tied on one end. When the shock was as big as he wanted he would throw the pulley around the shock run the rope throgh the pulley and draw it up tight then put a strand of binder twine around the shock and tie it off. he never had any shocks blow apart. Ended up hauling it to the shredder Was blown on wire frame to use has calf shed in winter Raised some good calves on the stover See they were not so dumb.We are running around baling corn stock today. gitrib

We used a McCormick-Deering grain binder to bind our cane and then shocked it for curing and storage. Some call it stooking instead of shocking.

To begin a shock we would bring several bundles close together if a carrier on the binder had not been used to dump several in a pile.

We'd lean the tops of two bundles together and while holding them (if needed) we'd add a third bundle in steep pyramid fashion. To this start you simply add bundles around the perimeter until you had a shock as big as you wanted.

We would haul some of the bundled feed in a hay rake and stack the bundles flat into a feed rack. During times when we couldn't haul in from the field we would then feed from the rack as it had head opening on the front where bundles could be tossed from the pile and the cattle could eat.
The feed rack was long enough to accommodate 50 head of stock cows. That was a lot of feed to haul each year although often we'd carry some over from the previous year.

More than you asked, but I'm not one for brevity.

Tim, Thats the way we did it back when. We called those four stalks tied together, hobbles. Dad planted corn 28 inches apart in 40 inch rows. A shock was 16 rows wide and 16 hills long with the hobbles tied in the 8th and 9th rows. Dad cut most of the time by himself as we kids were in school, after school 2 0f us kids would run a rope around the top of the shocks and pull it tight while dad tied the shock with binder twine near the top. The corn was hauled to the barn where it was run through the shredder which shucked the ears from the stalk and elevated them into a wagon. The fodder and shucks were shredded and blown into the barn loft for winter feed. Shreddin days were a neighborhood event with good food and fellowship. Joe

Born late in 39, I was told that the iron thing jammed into a corner of the shop was a corn binder. It did not move until the mid-fifties when we had a dry year. With very poor ears on the corn stalks, the only value the corn had was in the forage. The binder was a John Deere, horse drawn, single row. The snout was like those used on corn pickers and it had a sickle mower bar with just one section to cut the stalks. Chains elevated the standing stalks up to the knottier. When 10-12 stalks were in place, a needle would bring twine around the bundle, into the knottier, trip a clutch, the knot tied and twine cut. Now you have a bundle, it would fall onto a horizontal platform which had chain driven slates, that pushed the bundles off onto the ground, when a pedal was pressed. These bundles were dumped into rows that determined where the shocks would be.

We used a horse to shock. It was made of wood. A 12' section of 2x3 was the head, body and tail of the horse. The two 1x3 front legs four feet long bolted together at one end and fastened with one bolt, 1 1/2 feet from one end of the 2x3. One end of the front legs were spread and braced 2 1/2' apart. The legs also had braces to the body. The far end of the 12' section was the third leg. The first bundles were placed near the short legs on opposite sides as more corn was added along the long leg, a point was reached where the bundles stood on their own and you pulled the horse, feet first, out into the clear and finished the shock.

Can't tell you a thing about shocking corn.
Can tell you a story about shucking corn though.
Quite a few years ago I knew this guy who was kind of down on his luck. Mostly because of the booze. He'd grown up in a good farm family in Kansas and with his sister had inherited a few sections of land but had seen most of his half lost on foolish schemes and through a bottle.
So back when he was still living in Topeka along towards the end of the month when the trust money was getting short he needed to figure out a way to get a little booze. So he took a pipe cutter and cut off one of the parking meters downtown. He sawed it apart to get at it and took a dremel tool and fashioned a key that would fit the lock. He said the key worked good. As you know all the meters use the same key. So then he sewed a bag under his jacket so when he stood up to the meter the coins would fall into it conviently withpout spilling on the sidewalk. Then he would act like he was a bit drunk and wobble up to a few meters and dump the coins out of them. He told me how much a pound of quarters, dimes and nickels was worh but I don't remember now. Was enough $ to get him by with booze and bacon till the first of the month though. He was a well educated man and told some great stories if you liquored him up a little first. He told me that one couple of times and seemed real proud of his achievement.
"Jerry did I ever tell you the one about living in Topeka and shucking corn from the city?"

That is the way my dad did it too. And when you pulled the horse from the shock, it left the center open for air movement for faster drying.