The grind

This is somewhat of a "part two" to my last post, "lend me an ear". We had gathered up 250 pounds of corn that now needed to be hauled back to the house and shelled. James' dad had a new toy he really wanted to show us, and it was going to help us remove the kernels from the corn cobs much faster than we could have done it ourselves.

We drug the sacks of corn down to the basement, around the wood-burning stove to dry out. There were a few other sacks that had already been picked that were dried and ready for shelling. In order for us to really appreciate this new tool, though, James' dad insisted he time us as we shelled a cob by hand.

So, I bent over a tub and got to shelling. I thumbed the kernels until they popped out, a few at a time, into the bucket. I rubbed and twisted until a few more popped out. Eventually I finished my cob, at 43 seconds. What a pain. James was next. I've mentioned before that we might be a little bit competitive...

My technique...

He hunkered down and shredded the kernels from the cob. he clocked in at 23 seconds, but not without a complaint that his hands were already sore. Fine. He halved my time. But still, with now over 500 pounds of corn to be shelled, we were in for a long night if it was to be done by hand.

His technique...

That's when the new toy came in. This old-school cast iron corn sheller hooked onto a bench. You placed the cob in the top of the device and cranked a handle. As the handle cranked, a wheel within the device with knobs of teeth sticking out turned the cob around and around. As the cob turned it was pulled through the device, kernels popping out as it went. We timed it. In under 9 seconds it chewed all of the bright yellow, hard kernels off the cob and popped the empty cob out the other side. You didn't even need to bend over to pick up the spent cob.

We got to work. As James cranked I fed him a steady supply of cobs. I transferred the spent ones to a 5 gallon bucket. His dad would take the old cobs and feed them to the wood burning stove. It smelled great. Kernels were flying everywhere and soon enough the bucket was full. We swept up the vagrant kernels and added them to the pile. This was just step 2 of making feed for the cows, though. Step 3 is grinding the corn down. We haven't done this just yet, so I am sure it will be yet another experience, and I have already been told what my job in that particular step is.

The whole point of all of this is to work with what you've got. If James and I ever had to run our own self-sustaining farm we now know how to make feed for cattle on our own. This will be incredibly beneficial in James' end-of-world zombie apocalypse scenarios.