The Corn Crib on the Grounds of the LeSueur Pioneer Power Association
by
Brian Wayne Wells
This article remains under construction. Periodically, new blocks of text will appear in the article and/or current blocks of text will be corrected.
Starting in the annual show of the LeSueur County Pioneer Power Association began to demonstrate the farming chore of shelling ear corn. This chore was an annual wintertime event on the diversified farms located in the row-crop farming areas of the Midwestern United States in the era prior to the emergence of corn combines on diversified farms.
The corn shelling demonstration at the Pioneer Power Show was initiated by Bill Radil, a member of the LeSueur County Pioneer Power Association, who was residing at the time in West Concord, Minnesota, when Bill purchased a Minneapolis-Moline Model D corn sheller. However, the demonstration of corn shelling could best be presented to the public as a shelling out of a traditional corn crib rather than as a shelling of ear corn dumped from a wagon into the drag line of the corn sheller. Consequently, Bill Radil found a small “single corn crib” on the farm of a neighbor in the same West Concord neighborhood in which Bill lived. The name of the neighbor was Erickson.
Like typical single corn cribs the Erickson single corn crib was no wider than eight (8) feet wide to allow the dry winter air to easily pass through the ear corn stored in the crib. However, a couple of years after the Erickson corn crib had been brought to the Pioneer Power grounds, the storms of the winter and spring of destroyed the small single Erickson corn crib when it was blown off its rock foundation.
After a couple of years without a corn crib at all at the annual Show, the Pioneer Power Association obtained another corn crib. This time a “double corn crib” from Richard Borzilski from the same Tyrone Township neighborhood as the LeSueur County Pioneer Power Association. A double corn crib consists of two eight (8) foot single corn cribs placed about eleven (11) feet apart and both the cribs and the space in between the cribs were covered by the same gambrel roof.
After building a new cement block pillar foundation to house the new double corn crib, brought to the Pioneer Power Showgrounds, was secured to the foundation by anchor bolds. The Association was taking no chances that this new double corn crib would not be blown off its foundation. Then, a cement floor was laid in the alleyway of the corn crib.
This is the corn crib that continues to be used on the Pioneer Power Showgrounds through the present day. In the late autumn of the year, Dave Preuhs, founder of the LeSueur Pioneer Power Association fills the corn crib with ear corn that he grows on his own farm. The corn continues to dry out in the double crib on the Pioneer Powers Showgrounds for the remainder of the winter and all the next summer until the annual Pioneer Power Show held on the last full weekend in August,
Like the alleyways in double corn cribs on diversified farms all across the Midwest , this alleyway (especially when provided with a cement floor invites storage of vehicles and farm machinery. Thus, the alleyway has become the winter storage place of the Bill Radil’s Allis-Chalmers styled-model WC and the Wells family’s David Bradley flare box mounted on the David Bradley wagon gear. This tractor and the David Bradley wagon are often used as a part of the corn shelling field demonstration at the annual Pioneer Power Show. (The above-mentioned David Bradley wagon is the subject in the article contained at this website called “
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Traditionally, the corn crop was picked while the on the ear and stored in a corn crib for drying. At picking time, the corn may have a moisture content as high as 35%. Accordingly, when the freshly picked corn is first stored in the corn crib will be very fragrant. This fragrance was actually the moisture in the ears of corn leaving the corn and escaping into the cool air of the autumn.
So strong is the fragrance in the corn crib that the family car or the family truck can not be parked in the alley way of typical corn crib for fear that the fragrance of corn would infiltrate the padding of the seats of the car or truck and stay in the car or truck for a years.
Luckily, as the winter weather sets in, the ear corn would become less and less fragrant until the moisture content of the corn is only 15%. At this stage there is only a “dry smell” in the corn crib. At this point the fragrance was largely gone and the family car and/or truck may once again be safely stored in the alleyway of the corn crib.
The typical corn crib should be no wider than eight (8) feet wide to allow the dry winter air to easily pass through the ear corn stored in the crib. However most times, two single cribs were built close to each other and connected with a common gambrel roof. Thus, the crib became known as a “double corn crib.”
The typical corn crib should be no wider than eight (8) feet wide to allow the dry winter air to easily pass through the ear corn stored in the crib. However most times, two single cribs were built close to each other and connected with a common gambrel roof. Thus, the crib became known as a “double corn crib.”
Above the alleyway could be finished out into grain bins which would store oats until they fed to animals on the diversified farm or for storing soybeans until they were marketed at a nearby grain elevator.
