Mounted Corn Pickers

Dad did custom work when ever he could. Don't know how he had the time with a dairy and crops. One fall we had a piece of corn to pick for a neighbor. Used the WD45 pulling the new idea single row pull behind with a gravity box hooked to it. Our ground in the township is very wet. He would get half a row picked and would be stuck. I was maybe 12? He hooked the other WD45 to the front with a chain, put me on it and said don't stop till we get to solid ground. We spun our way through that field of corn and mud row after row. Dad thought it was work. I loved it! We did a fair job of getting most of it picked and not wallowed down. Year was 1964 ish. Just the memories are left.

Edited by Sugarmaker - 28 Mar 2020 at 7:53pm

Found this post yesterday and finish reading all of it this morning, really enjoy the stories. I started raising some corn in 1999 and put out about 6 acres that year. Planted it with a borrowed AC 4 row planter in April that spring,. I started a crop with no equipment to harvest it with, so on Memorial Day weekend I went to an estate auction and brought a Little Giant elevator for $600. I was about thirty miles from home and I haul it home on my 20 foot flatbed trailer. I had neighbor that had an New Idea 309 one row snapper picker sitting in a shed he wanted to get rid of. I brought it for $1100 and traded out the payment for the picker round baling hay for him that summer. Found a old gravity box that I put on a JD 953 running gear I had and borrow another wagon when I started picking that fall. I pull the New Idea picker and wagon with a MF 275 tractor. I put all that ear corn crop in a old corn crib on the farm and grind it that winter to feed to weaned calves off my own cows. Used a New Holland 355 grinder mixer for grinding the ear corn. I raise corn and fed to calves for about fifteen years till I sold my cows in summer of 2015 when took a full time job and quit farming full time. Still got all my equipment and still couple loads of ear corn for one of my neighbor for wildlife feed.

Edited by Tom59 - 29 Aug 2021 at 8:40pm

Well, not a picker, but here’s my E. My tenant had been making noises about retiring and I saw it advertised in the OAN. I went back and forth on it and bright and early on a Saturday morning drove from the east side of Des Moines to Gilman IL. One of those “easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” things

I still pick about 15 acres of corn each year. Got a 33 mounted on wd45. Not a bad picker but it is hard to get the tractor to go slow enough in heavy corn. Grew up with a 234 ih on a 450. That rig was something else. I think that picker may have been the most reliable implement international ever made. I milk guernseys so I think the cob helps with rumen health and improved butterfat

plummerscarin wrote: Why were the glass bowls a liability on mounted pickers?

A buddy of mine's Dad ordered a 1066 with NFE and mounted a 234 on it with sheller. Now that would be a corn-picker! He still has the 10, picker replaced with combine long ago.