Special Interest An Agricultural Art The comeback of hand cornhusking

By: Miranda Reiman,

When Roland Lauer, of Gothenburg, Neb., “graduated from grade school” somewhere around 65 years ago, he started picking corn by hand. As he walked the rows in his father’s fields, there was some good natured competition among the entire crew. They maybe even teased each other over who could pick the most or the best.

“We didn’t have hybrid corn, and one of the neighbors planted it,” the farmer says. “We picked for him and came home and we demanded dad plant hybrid corn.”

It made for easier picking and better corn.

Decades later, hybrids were as commonplace as the combines that harvested the crop, but the sport of corn husking was reinvigorated.

Lauer was surprised to find himself registered to compete in a formal contest.

“My son signed me up,” he laughs now. “I must have bragged about it a little too much.”

He went on to win, and even made time to travel to nationals on occasion. He credits his success to all the experience he gained growing up.

Similar stories could be repeated across the Midwest, as many of the oldest competitors today learned first on the farm.

The ‘hay days’ of husking

The earliest corn husking contests got their start in the 1920s, says Dick Humes, 2015 national corn husking historian.

“Henry Wallace would listen to the people come in and brag around the old store, when they were playing checkers or dominos, about how much they’d picked in a day,” he says. “Finally he said, ‘Let’s have a contest!’”

Eventually nine states allowed contestants to vie for two qualifying spots for nationals, and the large events drew crowds from across the country. Vendors set up and it was the precursor to events like today’s Farm Progress show.

“Of course electricity was coming to the farm in the ’30s, and they’d bring washing machines and refrigerators and the gas stoves,” Humes says. “It was really quite a deal.”

But then, World War II and leaner times intervened. The 1942 contest was planned, but never held.

Husking history relived

It may have went down as blip in the agricultural history books, if not for a couple of Kansas residents who decided to revive the sport as a way to draw interstate traffic. They held their first contest in 1971.

“Barring weather cancellations, Oakley has been hosting the Kansas State Cornhusking Contest the second weekend in October every year since,” says Laura Millensifer, of the town’s Buffalo Bill Cultural Center.

At the same time the Living History Farm in Urbandale, Iowa, was doing the same and today there are nine states involved again.

The same qualities that would’ve made somebody a good picker on a 1920s farm, are the ones that will win a contest today.

“You got to be fast, but you’ve got to be clean,” Humes says.

During the allotted time, a judge and a gleaner follow a contestant with a bag. They pick up what’s missed and weigh that, issuing deductions for every left-on-the-ground pound. They also sample what’s picked, and discount the husks.