In the News: Shucking Corn

Before we turn to the subject of this post, a personal note: I just completed the annual conference that consumes October and November every year, so I hope to return to a much more regular and frequent blogging schedule. We have more to discuss about the Peter D and Sarah farm, as well as numerous clips from newspapers from days gone by, not to mention the family history material that Carolyn Stucky shared some time ago.

For the moment, we take a step back to read a local news item from the 29 November 1944 issue of a York County newspaper known as The New Teller. The second item in the “Round-about Lushton” section is of interest to our family.*

Mr. and Mrs. Chris Buller attended a corn shucking bee Wednesday for their brother-in-law, Klaus Friesen. Mrs. Friesen passed away a short time ago.

Note first that only Grandpa and Grandma Buller are mentioned as attending the bee. Did some or all of the children also go? Perhaps a Buller Time reader recalls.

The occasion for the bee was somehow connected with the passing of Mrs. Klaus (better: Klaas) Friesen, who was none other than Grandpa’s older sister Margaretha (for details about her, see here). Margaretha had died on 10 November 1944 at the age of fifty-two. According to the report, the bee had taken place on the previous Wednesday. Since the 29 November issue was also published on a Wednesday, we can say with relative certainty that the bee took place on 22 November 1944, that is, the day before Thanksgiving that year.

This leads us to the event that prompted the news report in the first place: a corn shucking bee, also known as a corn husking bee (hence Cornhuskers). Combines today pick, shuck, and shell ears of corn all as part of a single process. Not so in the 1940s. There were mechanical corn pickers back then, but most farmers still picked corn ears by hand, shucked them in the field, and threw the husked ears into a wagon for transport from the field to the farmstead (for further details, see here and here; for a newsreel of the 1937 National Corn Husking Championship, see here). Once picked and shucked, the corn still needed to be run through a corn sheller to separate the kernels from the cob.

The entire process was labor intensive and presumably demanded all able-bodied family members to pitch in. With his wife recently deceased and only one daughter still living at home, Klaas Friesen faced a long and lonely haul getting his 1944 corn crop harvested. Fortunately, family and friends came alongside him to help. 

The details of the shucking bee are left unstated in the news report, but we are probably safe to conclude that Klaas’s friends, family, and neighbors gathered to help him harvest the year’s crop. Although husking bees sometimes were primarily social in nature (see here and here), accounts contemporary to this one generally present these gatherings as the community serving someone who needed help.

For example, the 19 November 1942 York Daily News Times reports:

A group of friends and neighbors held a “husking bee” at the home of F. P. Ehlers on Tuesday and husked out a field of corn. A hot dinner was furnished by the ladies. Mr. Ehlers has been unable to do any work for many weeks. (p. 4)

The 24 November 1938 Bradshaw Monitor reported a similar gathering: 

A big husking-bee was held at the Art Whittemore home 9 miles northwest of Bradshaw, last Friday. About a month ago Mr. Whittemore broke his arm cranking a car, which disabled him from corn husking, so his neighbors gave him a welcome lift. About 50 men with 21 wagons husked about 80 acres that day; but some of the men claim that the group of ladies who served the big dinner in excellent shape played a big part in the success of the event. (p. 1)

Whatever the exact nature and purpose of the corn shucking bee, it is clear that, the day before Thanksgiving, Klaas was given a reason to give thanks even in the face of his great loss. It is nice to know that, eighty years ago, Grandpa and Grandma were a part of that serving, supportive group.

* I wonder if the first Lushton item has a factual error (in addition to the spelling one). Grandpa Chris’s older sister Elizabeth married Dave Regier in 1925, and they moved onto the Epp-Buller farm when Peter P and Margaretha moved to California in August 1936 (see here). They had four sons, one of whom was named Fred, before their daughter Margaret was born in 1936. Because I know of no other Regier family living in the vicinity of Lushton with someone named Fred, I suspect that the newspaper notice may have meant to refer to Dave and Elizabeth Regier and their sons spending the day in Lincoln.