Haystacks and Corn Shocks

At one time, the haystacks and shocks of corn standing in fields signaled fall. With corn pickers and hay balers, those days are long gone, for the most part. In fact, I found none that were being used. However, a few scattered farmers, especially in the Appalachians, seem to still shock some corn stalks and bundle them, more for decorations than use. I could find no haystacks to take pictures of, not even in Amish communities. The closest I could find was a little hay mound in Wilkes County, North Carolina - not really a haystack.

I remember, as a child, my father cut both his hay and corn by hand. He usually used a sythe for the hay and a sickle on the corn. Of course, we would pick the corn first. There were some years when he hired help, if he had several large fields. Other years, he, Mother, and I did it ourselves. We would pull the ears and make stacks of them along the field. Then Mom would pull the tractor and wagon up, while Dad and I threw the corn into the wagon. Dad always cut the corn and made the shocks by himself. In later years, he only planted a small field of corn.

One year, my grandparents had an abundance of corn and held a corn shucking. I can remember the homemade tool used to cut through the corn shuck. It was a fat, pencil-shaped piece of wood with a leather strip attached to put around a finger. I was too young to remember much about the games, contests, and singing, but I remember I had fun.

As a young child, I sometimes hid in the center of a shock of corn. I also liked to slide down a haystack, but I had to have permission for that, so Dad wouldn't be angry when I scattered the hay too much. Those times are long gone, too.

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