My dad loved driving tractors and other machinery, especially those used for the mechanical harvest of crops. Being born in 1926, he grew up during a time when many farms transitioned from manual labor of men and horses to machines.
In his youth it was not uncommon for the crops to be harvested by hand and late in the year. For decades the corn borer and corn rootworm were two devastating insects that fed on the corn stalks and roots. The damage they caused by their feeding not only reduced yields but also the plants ability to stand tall and erect until harvest could be completed.
I remember one year when I was young and we had a cornfield planted around the farmstead. Many corn plants/stalks had fallen over and did not make it into the combine for harvest. I started picking up the lost ears in the harvested field. I filled many buckets, bushel baskets, and any container that would hold the ears.
Then one day my dad parked the combine in the yard and we threw all the corn from the containers into the corn head so the combine could shell them. Being proud of all the ears of corn I had gathered, I was expecting the 100-bushel grain tank of the combine to be filled significantly from my work. Imagine my surprise, and the lesson learned, when I saw that there was only a small pile of shelled corn in the grain tank of the combine. Hours and hours of work had been reduced to only a few bushels of shelled corn. That was the day I learned to appreciate the modern marvels of the combine and mechanization of agriculture that my dad had lived through in his previous 40 years of life.
In the last 20 years of my farming career the two pests mentioned were practically eliminated, and our cornfields seemed to always stand perfect. Perhaps I became spoiled with fields of perfectly tall standing corn. However, despite all our advanced technology, we have many fields of corn this year that have standability issues and have experienced major crop losses before harvest.
It is disheartening to know that you have left many ears of corn lying in a field and there is no way to salvage them economically. I know I will not be picking them up this winter like I did many years ago. I remember well the futility of my efforts from that experience. I do not consider myself lazy; I feel I have already learned my lesson years ago and do not need to repeat it. What is the bare minimum you would work for outside in the cold if you were bending over and picking up ears of corn in the mud? You would have to gather over 600 ears per hour to even come close to making $15/ hour.
We now have a stretch of decent weather that will allow many of the remaining cornfields to be harvested before winter arrives. The cornfields that are being harvested late may have some excessive losses of ears, but they will not completely go to waste. While the farmer may miss out on that income, the wildlife will have an ample supply of food this winter. I know many people who will be hunting this winter. Perhaps it is a small consolation that if they eat the animals that have been living off of my lost harvest, it has not been all for naught.
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