Had a good time picking corn with my Father the old fashioned way. Dad said he used this New Idea corn picker 50 years ago to pick seed corn. My Grandfather and his brothers owned a seed corn business years ago.
When my family moved to Wisconsin in 1975, my Dad was able to take this machine which was considered old even then. He modified it by putting on a sheller attachment so you will notice the corn is shelled off the cob as it enters the wagon.
Even though its old, it works great. Its tough to get parts, though. And its slow. We only picked about an acre per hour.
We used this machine all through my childhood until we got our first combine. Recently we have hired our neighbor to combine our corn. Big machine, very fast.
Probably too big to fit through my woods as this field of corn is mine and is difficult to access with today’s large machinery. I didn’t want to have to cut trees to get a combine in, so we put our New Idea picker back in use. They didn’t really think the name through, I guess.
Thankfully the corn was only 18% moisture so I was able to put it in a bin with a fan and will blow air through it to dry it a couple of points more. That along with weekly use should keep the corn in good condition. If it was wetter, or I planned to sell it, I would have used gas to dry it down to 15% which is the industry standard.
Posted by Curiousfarmer 
