Photo courtesy of Western Carolina University Southern Appalachian Digital Collections
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J. T. Cannon, Tiger, Georgia
Reinfried Armstrong Romanes (April 4, 1896-1978), more often known as R. A. Romanes or simply as Romanes, was born and raised in Europe. In 1919, he emigrated to America and, through family and political connections, settled in Alto, Georgia, where he remained for the rest of his life. It wasn’t until 1925 that Romanes became interested in photography, but after that time, photography became his passion. He made pictures of farming families in and around his adopted hometown in northeast Georgia and took landscape shots in Georgia, South Carolina, and western North Carolina. Most of the photographs in this collection were made in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and many are labeled as to where they were taken.
Looks like J.T. might have fodder on this sled. Pap told me great stories of gathering fodder for the animals to eat through the winter when he was a boy.
In those days it was typical for folks to leave their corn in the field until it had been frosted on a few times and was completely dried out before the process of gathering fodder was started. The corn in those days was different from the sweet corn most of us are familiar with today. It’s often called field corn.
Pap’s family’s first step in the process was to top the corn. The tops of the corn stalk were cut out just above the ears of corn. As they gathered several tops and bundled them together they became tops of fodder for the animals. Pap said tops could be stored out in the field and didn’t have to be stored in a shed or barn. The topping portion took up to a week or more to complete depending of course on how much corn you had.
The second step was to gather shocks of fodder. They would go back to each stalk and pull all the dried leaves from it, tying the leaves into shocks of fodder. Pap said these were usually kept inside the barn or corn crib. This process also took about a week or so depending on the amount of corn.
The last part was actually gathering the ears of dried corn. Pap said folks in this area sometimes waited as long as December to gather the corn. Leaving the ears on the stalk longer ensured the corn was completely dried out. After gathering the corn, most folks left the shucks on until they needed to use the corn. Pap said leaving the shucks on helped deter mice and weevils from getting in your corn. Although, Pap does recall some folks hosting corn shucking parties where folks gathered to shuck corn and visit with one another.
Pap’s favorite part of working with corn was the camaraderie. Neighbors would join together to help one another. Pap said the women would always cook a big meal for the men to eat. Even though they were working in the field all day, Pap said corn gathering was still fun to him.
One time after a day spent in the field the men were sitting down to eat. A team of horses with a wagon load of corn was standing by a couple of sheds up above the house. There was also a team of steer hitched to a wagon full of corn. The steer had real long curved horns. Pap said something spooked the steer and they took off on their own, running into the horses. One of the horses was cut by a steer horn. The horn sliced the horse’s stomach open and part of its insides came out. Pap said he’d never forget his Grandpa washed the horse’s guts off with soapy water, tucked them back inside its stomach, and sewed the wound up with a piece of sea grass string. The horse lived.
Last night’s video: Remembering Miss Cindy: Her Twist on Egg Sandwiches & Old Photos.
Tipper
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Well, my post isn’t here either so even though it’s a few days later I’d like to explain how my dad gathered and stored his corn. It was different than the way Pap did it. I grew up north of Chattanooga, Tn. He cut the stalks with a corn knife, a large knife with a wide blade which looks somewhat like a machete. He would leave 3-4 stalks uncut to hold the shocks up and stand the cut stalks around the others forming a shock. He would tie it with a “tow”, not toe (look up that word), string around the middle much like you see Halloween decorations today except they were larger than most decorations. We have copies of a large photo TVA took of his field of shocked corn years ago. One of my brothers discovered it in an office in Chattanooga and was able to get copies for the family and eventually get the large framed photo. We have since seen the photo in some books. Of course this stage would take several days. I don’t remember him getting any help. Maybe he preferred to do it himself. After all the corn was cut and shocked he would work on one shock at a time. He would cut those uncut stalks within the shock, untie the grass string and when I was little he would put me near the top, I had to hold tight so I could “ride” when he pushed the shock over. What fun! It was also fun to watch whatever dogs we had at the time wait patiently watching for mice to try to escape. Then he would sit on his knees (how he did that for so long I do not know) and pull the stalk in his lap, quickly and methodically snap off the ears, throw them in a pile on one side of him then put the remaining stalks on the other side to make a small pile of fodder. One by one he worked on the shocks in the field, many times by moonlight. When he finished he hitched up his team of horses or in later years, mules, and scooped up each pile of corn into the wagon to be stored in the crib. Then he loaded the fodder in the wagon and made very large shocks near the fence so that he could throw the fodder over the fence to feed the livestock during the winter. It was a slow process but he enjoyed doing it and it worked. I have fond memories and miss those days. I guess it was one of those jobs that got done even though different people did it different ways.
Sallie-thank you for trying again! I so enjoyed learning how your daddy did it 🙂
As tobacco was our money crop, corn was an equal staple crop on our farm. Fodder was a usual side product of our corn fields. We picked corn by hand in the 40’s so we made use of the stalks to supplement our hay for our cattle. We usually cut and shocked the stalks and many times left it in the field till it was needed. Ear corn was stored in the crib where outside was a hand sheller we used for grain corn for feed. As most farm activities of the time, most of what we did was labor intensive! We used mules and a sled instead of a wagon when we brought fodder out of the fields. As we cut the corn stalks, the roots remained in the ground as a winter cover crop. I remember those fodder times well!
I am getting here awfully late, but I wouldn’t miss hearing and seeing what you have to say for the world!!! I have to admit this fodder tale ranks right up there with my favorite stories of all time visiting your blog!!!! Back in the day people could do stuff and save their beasts to top it!!! I’d give everything I have to roll back time about 250 years…. Murray is the first one who taught me of fodder. I’d never heard of such…. But ain’t fodder and sod and all outdoors wonderful!!!! It’s the best part of living!!!
This was interesting to read, especially about the saving of the horse. I just cannot imagine.
I don’t know anything about fodder or doctoring animals but I do know scrambled egg sandwiches are tasty with coffee in the morning!
The tribute for Miss Cindy was very thoughtful and the pictures of her were just beautiful. She was one classy lady..if we had met back in the sixties, we could have been friends!!
I’m excited today..got my new ROGUE hoe but it’s too hot to work outside! Everyone stay hydrated.
I am like one of the other readers who said they thought fodder was what people used to decorate their yards in fall. I know that’s what my mom did every year she grew corn. I did the same the two times I tried to grow corn but was unsuccessful. I didn’t think my failed corn was a total failure since I had the fodder stocks to decorate my front porch for fall.
I’m always a learning something I didn’t know from Tipper and from the other readers too. Thank you to all!
Sounds like Pap’s Grandpa should have been a surgeon. Of course, back in those days
most people had no money to spend on the years of education necessary to be trained
in such a highly skilled profession. Come to think of it, most people today don’t
have the money, and if it weren’t for loans, well, you know what I’m saying. Leaving aside
the question of whether Pap’s Grandpa would even have been interested in becoming
a surgeon if opportunity had knocked on his door, you have to admire the man’s pluck
in undertaking the task of treating that mule and sewing him up again. Mules were
probably not easily come by and were valuable commodities. Necessity may not only
be the mother of invention but of pluck as well in some cases. Anyway, my hat’s off
to your great grandpa!
I enjoyed learning the process of gathering fodder. Daddy used to tell me about pulling fodder as he called it when he and his brothers were still at home because my grandpa was sick and not able to help. Thank you for sharing this very interesting process. Glad the horse lived also.
Enjoyed the video last night. Never thought about scrambled egg sandwiches the way Miss Cindy made them, but I want to try them made like that. That was a sweet way to remember her birthday and I loved all of the pictures. I know she is missed. I do wish you also a belated happy birthday, Tipper. my granddaughter’s birthday is today. She is turning eleven. I don’t know where time has gone. Seems like only yesterday we were at the hospital waiting on her arrival. Enjoy those grandsons all you can because they grow up so fast.
When we kids would eat around something we didn’t like, leaving it on our plate, my dad would say, “You’re stemming your fodder”, like a mule eating the dried leaves but rejecting the coarse stems of the fodder. Or if we were feeling sick and had no appetite, he’d say, “He’ll be all right; he’s just off his feed today.” Farm animals had such days, too, hence the phrase. I watched my granddad give his big gray Percheron horse medicine from a soft drink bottle. He called it “a drenching.” Never knew what ailed old Dan or what the dose contained, but it was a homemade remedy for sure. There were no veterinarians in those parts.
Most of the corn we see being grown is for animal feed.
Most corn goes into making corn syrup/sugar for processed food, or ethanol fuel, these days. Of course, some grain goes to feeding cattle, too.
I remember the shocks of corn that Dad would cut corn and make them, we would come back and shuck the corn when it was completely dried and tie the shocks so they could stand until we started feeding the livestock with it, but we didn’t do all the other things that Pap did, we would gather the piles of corn and take it to the corn crib next to the barn and gather fodder all winter using the sled an a team of horses. This was in the 50’s and 60’s.
I wrote a long dissertation about how we did tops and fodder in my youth but just before I went to type in my name it all disappeared. My hands have been cramping badly lately so maybe I’ll try again later.
Morning everyone. This isn’t about corn. Many years ago when I was 18 I traveled around to different states. I went to my friend’s home town in Tennessee. An older couple had a get together. The women were in the kitchen all day and the men were outside loading up horse poop on people’s trucks . They said it was good for their gardens. This was some of the most fun I have ever had. I will admit I went outside a lot to see the men shoveling. I eat scrambled egg sandwiches sometimes. My favorite is an egg fried in butter and the yolk is still a little soft. I hold the egg and let it dribble around the bread. The pictures of miss Cindy were beautiful.
I helped my Grandad Byers pull fodder, cut tops and shuck & shell corn by hand. Fodder and tops would be stacked in the field. We would shell corn with a cob to szve the skin on our hands. I had enough of the “good ole days”
Don, your comment made me think of my father in law. He would often laugh and say “you can have those good ole days, I lived through them.”
Randy,
I used to work with an older guy who would say, “I don’t want to go back to the good ole days and those people who say they do must have forgotten how rough those good ole days were!” Can remember when I was a young child getting concerned about our crops, hay, apples, etc. when there was a long dry spell. Of course, God always provided.
Oh my gosh! I can’t imagine! “Hold my plate while I stuff this intestine back in the horse….”
Out on the prairies, where there was no corn, hay was the necessity to overwinter cattle. You spent a good part of summer doing nothing but cutting hay so your animals could get through the lean times of winter. There was no idle time. You cut and bundled hay. Period. Or you lost your herds. It wasn’t easy work; in fact, it was dangerous. And it had to be kept dry and stored. Most importantly, it had to be cut when it was fresh so it had needed nutrients which narrowed the window of harvest.
My grandparents had a farm and grew field corn to feed livestock. The dried ears in the shucks were stored in a corn crib. A large black rat snake lived in the crib and kept mice in check.
Back then folks had to be their own veterinarian and human doctor for that matter, at times. A resilient generation.
How interesting. People really knew how and when to do things to survive. The farm across the road grew field corn. I went over to steal an ear for my pony. The corn stalk was still green. Field corn leaves are razor sharp and I sliced open my thumb. the cut was very deep. I couldn’t tell my folks how I cut myself so I just ran cold water over it until it stopped bleeding. The scar altered my thumbprint. I never told my folks as I would have been in serious trouble for stealing!
While my maternal Granddad was a railway worker, he and my Grandma ran a dairy farm just under the Range from Toowoomba in Queensland (Aust). My Mum recalled when times were bad in drought, accompanying Granddad in the old spring cart to cut grass for the stock. Coming back at night, mum would lay on top of the grass and watch the stars.
I too had to take our few cows on the road side for dry times fodder. The local Council (County) were sticklers and you always had to have the permit at the ready if they came by.
I learned something here. I didn’t know that fodder shocks were just the leaves only. I thought that a fodder shock was like what you see people stand up in their yards for fall decorating. The whole process was so logical and saved every part of the corn possible.
No veterinarians around back then so one had to do to save the horse, a vital part of the farm.
I used to help my uncle shuck corn when I was a kid, so it was interesting to read about this process back in time. My uncle would store the corn for his horses and cows and after the corn was harvested he would turn his cows and horses loose in the field to eat the remaining corn, so no tying of leaves, or stalks. And all of this was done by hand even though he could more than afford paying for someone to combine the field which was about 4 acres in size!
Matt and your tribute to Miss Cindy was so nice! I never thought of using scrambled eggs for a fried egg sandwich. It looked good!
I loved the pictures! They were so good.
God bless you and yours.
I didn’t think of using just a fried egg for a sandwich. I have used scrambled egg with Tabasco sauce on it!
That’s an interesting story about the corn.
I enjoyed last nights video about Miss Cindy. She was a lovely lady and I know y’all miss her so much❣️
This morning I’m going to make an egg sandwich Matt’s way. Looks yummy!
Have another great day❤️
The first thing that came to mind about “Gathering Fodder” was the “Pack Saddle” worms that would sometimes sting with the “hair” on their back. I guess they were called “Pack Saddle” because they had a little brown spot on their backs that resembled a saddle? In any case, they sure did inflict some intense pain, but it did subside pretty quickly.
A pack saddle worm is a larval stage of a limacodid or slug moth (Acharia stimulea)1. It is also known as a packsaddle caterpillar or saddleback. This 1-inch long, bright green caterpillar has a brownish-purple spot in the middle of its back1. It got its common name due to its similarity of saddle that is designed to hold or support loads on the backs of pack animals1. The worm stings and is found on fodder2. It is a large caterpillar (Sibine stimulea) having a poisonous sting3
One of my favorite memories is of being with my Granddaddy Kirby when I was a kid “helping” him gather fodder and shocks for his mule Kate. I remember fodder being a bundle of just leaves tied together by a corn leaf. Shocks were the stalks along with the leaf tied together in bundles. Granddaddy would cut the stalks with a broke-half blade butcher knife. I now have this knife, it is one of my most prized possessions, I keep it in a safe. I said helping Grandaddy, the truth is I was probably at times more of a hinderance to him but he would always let me tag along with him and never say a word if I was a bother. As I said a few days ago, I worshipped the ground he walked on. I worry when I write these comments about enjoying the time with Granddaddy people may wonder about my Daddy, he worked a day shift job and just as soon as he came home I would spend time with him. In no way am I saying I loved or enjoyed being with Granddaddy more than my Daddy.
Nowadays you wouldn’t have much corn for long if you tried leaving it on the stalks, the deer would soon have it ate up.
Sanford, the sting is almost like an electric shock–scary when you don’t know what’s happening . They are pretty though! Thankfully we haven’t seen any around here for many years.