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Old June 8th, 2016, 02:19 PM
POWERSTROKE POWERSTROKE is offline
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Default Re: on ebay "702 V-6" logo

Local home town seed corn company switched from using tractor mounted ear corn pickers to using those New Idea self-propelled pickers about the early/mid-1970's. One of those gasoline V-6 powered pickers spent most of the fall and early winter sitting in one of Dad's farm's grass waterways as a burned out hulk. I guess a fuel line sprung a leak and sprayed gasoline on a glowing red hot exhaust manifold.

Running one of those self propelled pickers would have been a much nicer job than a tractor mounted picker where you sat right in the middle of all the roller chain drives running all the parts of the picker, and also sitting right in the middle of all the dust, dirt, noise, and heat when it's hot, and cold when it's cool out. Lots of farmers ended up missing hands and arms from not paying attention to where they put their hands/arms when running a picker back in the 1950's & '60's. By the early 1970's self-propelled combines harvesting shelled corn off the cob was well on the way to completely replacing ear corn pickers.

Ear corn pickers are a novelty now days, only used at historical farming shows, like the Half Century of Progress held at the old Chanutt Air Force base in Rantoul, Illinois every other year, next show will be fall of 2017. A few other die-hards still pick corn, mostly to grind ear corn to feed beef cattle. If you've ever had good ground ear corn fed beef you can appreciate how great it is compared to silage or grass fed beef. I grew up eating corn fed beef, my Cardiologist would disown me if I still ate that kind of beef but would probably want to come visit us for steaks on the grill a couple times a year!
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