Yep. Lots of limestone has been quarried from the area.
Not where I grew up. however.
That’s called detasseling and your reason is wrong. It’s done to create hybrid corn varieties. Usually there are six rows of “female” corn from which the tassels are yanked out by hand. This is done before the tassels open. Between each six rows of female corn are planted two rows of “male” corn whose tassels are left to pollinate the female corn. This creates the hybrid ears. There are some machines that chop off the tassels and others that pull them between two rotating wheels. There are also some kids ride in while pulling tassels.
I did this job three different seasons. I don’t remember many fields with stalks over shoulder height. The worst was a half-mile long field in which some fool had double seeded the middle two rows. This meant having to yank twice as many tassels from stalks that were all shorter than knee high. That was my last day in that job!
I’m conceding that you’re right about the purpose of detasseling, and, as I noted about picking rock, modern technology has replaced manual labor. But maybe we can disagree about what constitutes “shoulder height “ when neither of us specified the age of the worker.
Obviously, my greatest sin in this thread is how I tried to sneak in the subject of abusive child labor in family farming. I had some familiarity with that, in the fields as well as from my mother would relate as a pediatric nurse in a rural hospital.
Agriculture in general is not particularly safe either for adults or youths.
The research revealed that from Jan. 1, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2019, more than 60,000 people were treated in emergency departments for nonfatal, agricultural-related injuries. Significantly, nearly a third of those injured were youths, according to study author Judd Michael, Penn State professor of agricultural and biological engineering, College of Agricultural Sciences
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I have family in Ohio. When I was around 10 we were visiting from California. One day one of my uncles took my dad and a bunch of us kids for a ride in the country in his pickup. When it was near time to go home we saw a farmer and his son harvesting some corn (manually IIIRC), and we asked if we could buy a bushel (we could). When we got back to the house one of the aunts said “We got some really fresh corn for dinner.” And my uncle said “Not as fresh as ours!”
Shoot, that’s a lot of injured farmers; I admire their steady work without a doubt.
My summer garden typically includes 50+ corn plants each year, and I’ve experimented with varieties and growing approaches over the years. Some thoughts based on this.
Varieties that claim multiple ears per stalk are, IMO, trading on a technicality. Secondary ears are rarely worth the trouble given their small size and (often) the delay in their silk timing relative to the main ears, meaning in a home garden context you won’t get good kernel development on the stubby little ears anyway. I always plan on one good ear per plant.
A home crop can yield nice full ears with hand pollination. As noted above, even a compact home plot will get very poor pollination from wind alone since the pollen will mostly blow away. But it’s easy to capture pollen in a small baggie or whatnot and shake it onto the silks of each ear once or twice after the silks have emerged. The tassels are very productive in the morning, and a gentle shake of one ripe branch of one tassel puts a nice serving of yellow powder into your container of choice for distribution.
In a home garden, it’s helpful to stagger the planting in a few chunks separated by a couple of weeks each. The relative timing of the tasseling and silking on a single plant is a bit random, as it’s dependent on conditions, and some plants might mature more quickly or slowly in each aspect. By staggering the planting, you have an essentially continuous supply of pollen regardless of when silking happens on any one plant. It also means you can harvest over an extended period, since each plant is a one-shot producer.
My Dad got hurt a couple of times, but none of us kids did. Besides the corn picking injury alluded to above he crack some ribs stopping himself from falling into a pit filled with chicken shit. All I got was an occasional blister or scrape. I definitely resented putting in occasional 12 hour days when the most my friends did was mow the lawn and take out the trash.
This youtube short packs a lot of good information about planting the seed and thinning the plants.
I use raised beds because the soil is better and it saves wear and tear on my back.
