Saturday, April 26, 2014

Shelling Corn the Old-Fashioned Way



There's the easy way and then there's the slow way. In describing how Anthony and Carol Boutard process the Roy's Calais Flint corn they grow at Ayers Creek Farm, I said that Carol used a hand-cranked, cast iron corn sheller to take the dried kernels off the corncobs.

Roy's Calais Flint corn…beautiful!

Yesterday it was my turn to learn how that part of the process works by helping Anthony shell and clean 10 large bags of corn, ending up with 175 pounds of shelled corn kernels.

Why don't they just buy an automated machine that would do the same job faster and easier? Anthony said that at a cost of more than $20,000 and at their scale of production it doesn't make economic sense. That means the old hand-cranked sheller is assured of many more seasons of work.

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