A Primative (but Free!) Corn Sheller

By Ronald Brown
Published on January 1, 1983
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Drive in four nails at the 3, 6, 9, and 12 o'clock positions. It's simple but it will do the job.
Drive in four nails at the 3, 6, 9, and 12 o'clock positions. It's simple but it will do the job.
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A brace and bit is useful, but it you don't have one already a wood chisel will work. The hole doesn't need to be perfect.
A brace and bit is useful, but it you don't have one already a wood chisel will work. The hole doesn't need to be perfect.
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Anyone can use the corn sheller, even a child.
Anyone can use the corn sheller, even a child.

Many years ago, when I first kept chickens, I found myself running low on poultry feed and short on cash. Luckily for me, a farmer down the road had a cornfield that was so mucky he couldn’t get into it with his tractor. Rather than let the crop go to waste he offered to let me handpick what I wanted for $1.00 per bag — regardless of the size of the sacks used!

So, knowing a real bargain when I see one, I promptly “volunteered” all available family members for corn-harvesting duty. We picked the dried-on-the-stalk ears in the sun and in the rain … we picked when it was so cold that ice covered the puddles in the tractor-tire ruts … we even picked with snow on the ground and after the earth turned to mush the following spring.

Obviously, we got more than enough chicken feed, and — even more obviously — most of our spare time that winter was spent husking and shelling corn. (Fortunately, corn keeps best on the cob, so we were able to shell it as we needed it.)

There Are Easier Ways

I must say, a corn sheller sure would have been nice to have had that year. At the time, both Montgomery Ward and Sears sold models that could be clamped onto the side of a barrel and — according to catalog descriptions — would process 14 bushels an hour. (I personally have grave doubts about achieving any such production rate. The machine can probably stand up to the task if you can turn the handle fast enough, but should you actually push yourself that hard the first hour, you’ll likely be too tired to shell any corn the following hour!) In those lean times, though, I simply didn’t have the $25 required to make such a purchase; today the same shelters cost $60 to $65!

So we processed our chicken-feed bonanza all by hand. To do this, you simply grasp a dry ear of corn horizontally in front of you (as if it were the handle of a lawn mower) and, while holding it over a container of some kind, twist your hands back and forth. The kernels will be rubbed from the cob and fall into the bucket — right along with tiny flecks of skin scraped painfully from your palms and fingers. (If your hands are in shape, they won’t get sore until you’re into the third bushel. If not, I hope you have a good remedy for blisters.)

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