Corn Shocks in a winter field - Artistic

by Chris Bordeleau

Title

Corn Shocks in a winter field - Artistic

Artist

Chris Bordeleau

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Amish corn fields, cold and desolate, in the depths of winter. A mist in the air, ice crusted snow underfoot, the air is still and silent. In the distance the familiar clip clop as an Amish family goes about their day in their horse and buggy. Life slows down and almost stops and then the wind blows.

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Amish stack the corn in these stacks called corn shocks.

A hundred years ago, corn harvesting required more labor than any other farm crop. Corn was used not only for grain, but the stalk and leaves made good feed for horses, cattle, and sheep.

Farmers had to chop down the cornstalks one at a time, and stack them in shocks to dry. A field of shocks, like hundreds of teepees in straight rows, was a magnificent sight.

But this was not all. After the stalks had dried, they were loaded on wagons and taken to the farmstead. Then they were shucked by hand or by machine. Some parts went into the barn for livestock, while the ears were moved to a corncrib for further drying.

Sometimes the corn was shucked in the field from standing stalks. The ears were stripped from the stalk and tossed into a wagon, which was slowly moved through the field. This greatly increased the farmer's workload and was a terrible task.

As machines were invented, the time needed to harvest corn was lessened. Also, farmers could grow more corn without increasing the workload too much. Early machines took over cutting and bundling of stalks but left a lot of handwork such as hauling and shucking to the farmer.

Since the Amish still cling to "old ways" (which is NOT a bad thing in my opinion) you will see a lot of fields with corn shocks like that.

Uploaded

December 13th, 2014

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