Corn Shelling

I took my open-pollinated white corn over to the farm this week and Tom and I shelled it.

We have this old corn sheller that someone put an electric motor on.

It makes short work of shelling the corn from the cobs. But you still have to strip the husks off the corn by hand. After picking corn by hand, and then husking it by hand, you get a real appreciation of modern diesel powered machinery.

I had two 30 gallon garbage cans full of corn. That resulted in about 50 pounds of shelled corn and a 30 gallon can mostly full of cobs.

I’m saving the cobs to use for smoking meat or fish later this year. I remember Dad smoking fish with corn cobs when we were kids. It’s supposed be a mild, sweet smoke.

The best ears we shelled separately to save for seed. That’s old-style genetically modified organisms, saving the best traits for next year’s seed. Here’s Owen and me posing with one of the trophy ears.

I have about 25 pounds I’m saving for seed and to grind into corn meal and to share with friends. The rest we’re feeding to the steers.

It’s kind of silly. We go through maybe 3 pounds of corn meal in a year. And we have 10’s of 1000’s of bushels of corn out in the bins to feed to the cows. But it’s satisfying in a way that can’t be measured to grow the seeds that Dad’s friend Sam Taulbee gave me, year after year. To plant them in the earth with my hands and harvest them with my hands. To pick up each ear and look at it and select the best for next year.

It’s good to remember past years, and to try to make next year better.