Throwback to days gone by

There was a time 80 years or so ago when this one-row corn picker was considered state-of-the-art, replacing the horse-drawn wagon and picking ears by hand. Matthew Aerni of Madrid has a penchant for old machinery and was looking for a one-row picker that he finally found from a family in Kansas. He spent several months getting the 1940s genre Wood Bros. picker back to working condition and picked corn on his grandpa Mel’s farm this harvest season.  He located the wagon in South Dakota. In the old days, the ear corn would be stored in a corn crib until it was shelled or fed on the ear. The small Ford tractor was already a fixture on the Aerni farm and worked great for pulling the picker and wagon. Aerni graduated from PCS in May and plans to enlist in the Air Force in the near future.