Early settlers could only work a piece of land that was matched in size to their ability to do the work involved. They first engaged in subsistance farming, producing just enough crop to support their livestock and their family.
New inventions allowed them to reduce the time needed for each chore, and this increased the size of land they could farm and crop they could process, creating a surplus. The surplus allowed them to move from subsistance farming to the marketplace.
This young volunteer (you gotta love kids that get involved in history) was operating a corn sheller. The whole corn cob was fed into the top, the wheel turned by hand which stripped the corn, feeding it into a box, and tossing the bare cob into a barrel.
I had my eye on those corn cobs. I'm fixing to whip up a batch of corn cob jelly!
5 comments:
We have an old John Deere 1B sheller that we still use. Since we feed corn to our goats, we let it dry and shell it.
The only difference between ours and the one in your picture is ours is tin, and also has asprocket for some kind of motor. I might use the sprocket in the future when the kids stop believing turning the sheller will help them in their sports.....
I forgot to mention my childhood experiences in the Florida panhandle...where the corn sheller consisted of my thumb at the end of my arm. I picked up a corn cob from the bin shown here and guess what??.....I can still shell corn by hand. Woo Hoo.
Corn cob jelly??? Is there such a thing? And if so...why?
There is such a thing, and I'm fixin' to whip up a batch after all the corn is harvested. Why...hmmm, well the settlers used everything, and the corn cobs evidently had some additional nutritional value after the corn was shelled.
And....it's a lovely shade of pink.
Stayed tuned, the Farmers Wife may just have a contest, with a couple jars of corn cob jelly going to the winners!
Will do.
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