Dateline: 11 May 2014
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Last month, with sap season behind us, Marlene and I decided to treat ourselves to a day of antique shopping. Wood and tin and iron artifacts from our agrarian past fascinate me. Can anyone identify this handy tool, carved from a piece of wood, with a bit of leather?
I have never seen that tool but it is similar to a tool that I have seen around my area that was used to shuck corn with. I saw one made out of a large nail with leather wrapped around it to slip your fingers it. What ever you have could be used for corn most likely.
ReplyDeleteSunnybrook Farm—
ReplyDeleteYou got it. I believe it would be called a husking peg. There were several at the antique shop. Most were manufactured, not homemade. I think Lehman's sells metal ones. I like it that someone a long time ago took the initiative to make their own instead of buying one.
How about that! I have not seen a wooden one but then they would be the least likely to survive. They took shucking seriously back in the day, I work at the Blue Ridge Institute and we have a neat old photo of a whole family working with ears of corn. I didn't see any of these tools but I will have to look more closely tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteSunnybrook Farm,
ReplyDeleteI was in an antique shop once and, looking through a box full of old b&w photos, I found one of two grizzly old timers sitting amidst tall piles of corn in a barn with husks and shucked field corn around them. It was a classic picture from a bygone era, much like the picture you mention, and I debated long and hard about parting with $20 for it. In the end, I decided against it. But it was quite the picture. I can imagine it was a good feeling to have the corn in the barn. And they would have worked at husking it in the fall and winter, when things were normally a bit slower on the farm.
that's a corn husker. My grandpa had some. Even after tractors became common, small farmers would hand harvest a few acres of corn. They'd have a wagon pulled by a truck or horse, hand husk the field dried corn and toss it in the wagon. That tool can be worn on the inside of the hand and used to rip down the husk, after which the corn comes out in one unwrapping. They'd later come back an make shocks out of the stover, like tipis, and feed it to cows and sheep. They used to (maybe still do?) have shuckin contests...
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