Re: Mounted corn pickers

Posted by LA in WI on January 06, 2010 at 09:16:57 from (71.98.16.144):

In Reply to: Mounted corn pickers posted by charlie M on January 05, 2010 at 14:07:46:

I was raised in central Iowa (Waterloo area), and farmers out there mostly used mounted pickers for several reasons:

1. Mounted pickers let you go thru muddy fields much easier than a pull type. Same as today...farmers don't want to sit around waiting for a field to dry if they don't have to. The narrow fronts didn't help things, though.
2. With high yielding corn, nobody wanted to run down corn when "opening" a field. Pull types knocked down so much corn when opening a field I saw some farmers and their whole families out picking up ear corn after the picker went thru it. (Not every field had good fences for cattle or hogs to glean the field).
3. With our mounted picker, we would get requests from farmers with pull types to open their fields...we did it but didn't like it because we never knew what we might hit or fall into along fencerows.
4. Mounted picker owners were always proud of their machines and pull type machines were kind of a sign that you weren't really a serious corn grower. Strange to say, but true. Kind of like some guys today with diesel pickups. (This is not to offend anyone, but it was what it was).

I liked running mounted pickers (#24 on an H Farmall, 2MEs on SM). But they were dusty and awfully cold in November. My uncle once said he got so cold running his picker that he could drink one cup of coffee and p** three of them.

Yes, farmers lost fingers and whole hands with pickers, I had a couple close escapes. If the mounted picker didn't get you, the power take-off on a pull type could because too many farmers left the pto running while cleaning out a pull type. When combines became popular the prevalence of farmers with missing fingers went way down.

Yes, mounted pickers would catch fire. I once helped a farmer put out a mounted picker fire (M diesel tractor) and that fire kept reigniting...but didn't blow up like a gas tractor could. I recall many times the local rural fire trucks trying to put out corn fields that were on fire (the tractor and picker were burnt hulks by the time the fire truck got there). That white smoke would bring farmers from everywhere...they knew what had happened.

Sorry for the long post. These old memories of old iron are fun!
LA in WI

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