Corn Crib:
This corn crib was built in the 70's. Built as a pole building, using locust posts. Nothing on the farm was wasted, when we tore down an old chicken house in the 70's, we saved all the lumber and used lumber was reused to build other buildings. The doors on the corn crib were from the old house that came with the farm, that was torn down in the early 60's. Some of the old lumber is still stored in a barn.
People ask me today how I know how to build things, and I reply it's because I grew up on a farm where we always did everything ourselves. We couldn't afford to have someone come in to build things for us. If we wanted it done, we had to do it ourselves. I recall helping build the corn crib.
We didn't plant corn every year, usually about every other year. Dad has an old 2 row corn planter in one of the barns. We dreaded the corn years, because we did not have a corn picker. We picked several acres of corn by hand, using one of those little metal corn huskers, and then piling the corn in piles on the ground. We would come thru later with the tractor/trailer and pick up the piles of corn from the ground, and put in the corn crib. The corn crib has a couple little doors near the top, where we could shovel the corn in. The corn was used to feed the hogs and select cows that were going to be butchered. We would take corn to the mill in town to be ground. The ground corn was then stored in 55 gal drums, with a lid in order to keep the mice out.
When I was young our pig pen / pig house was a ways from the house, and we had to carry buckets of water to feed the pigs. It's the A frame bulding in the background of this picture from 1964. We would put ground corn in the trough, and then add water. The pigs loved it.
I'm in this picture, with 2 of my sisters and another brother.
I remember we used to play hide an seek in the corn fields at night, and lose my youngest brother in the corn field. We also planted pumpkins with the corn, and we would take them into my grandmothers house in town, and sell them in front of her house.