Corn Picking: Everyone in your group will work in the field helping farmers hand-pick this year's corn crop. Corn will be husked right on the stalk, so that only the dry yellow ear is removed and put into baskets. Help a farmer load the corn onto a wagon and meet his team of horses that will pull the wagon to the corn crib for unloading.

Corn Storage and Shelling: Visit our corn crib and learn how corn is dried for use as animal feed or corn meal. Then take ears for "shelling" and learn how to remove the grain from the cob. Each person will hand-shell an ear before a farmer demonstrates use of mechanical shellers powered by hand. Learn how farmers recycle corn cobs.

Feed and Corn Meal Making: Use corn shelled by your group to fill the hopper of a hand-powered grinder. Learn how to crack corn for animal feed, and how to use the grinder to make coarse, medium or fine ground corn. Next, try using a mortar and pestle to grind corn, and find out why our 100 year old corn sheller would be considered a very modern tool by many of the world's farmers.

Corn Bread Baking and Tasting: Visit the farmhouse kitchen and help our staff make corn bread. While the bread is baking, learn about different types of corn--field corn, sweet corn, broom corn, Indian corn and popcorn. Watch a farmer make popcorn the old fashioned way. Samples of corn bread and popcorn will be available for tasting!

This website is a project of The Friends of Howell Living History Farm and the text and graphic contents of this website are © 2001-2008 by The Friends of Howell Living History Farm.

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