If you’ve been stopping by here to see what I have to say now and again, then you know I’m a country girl. I grew up on a farm where my dad raised beef cattle although we never said beef cattle back then. They were just cows. Usually a mixture of colors and kinds. Dad did prefer Herefords. They were dark red with a white-face. Dad raised corn and wheat for his own use mostly and cut hay for the cows. He also raised tobacco like most every other Kentucky farmer back then. At that time you got an acreage allotment according to how much land you owned. Tobacco was the cash crop that made it possible for most small farmers to buy those farms and feed their families.
I can talk about tobacco crops another time. Tonight I’m thinking about corncribs. That’s because on the way to church this morning, we passed my grandfather’s farm as we always do. But for some reason my eye caught on the only building left in the barn lot now. The corncrib. There used to be two barns but they’re gone now, past their usefulness and torn down. The corncrib is past its usefulness too, but it’s still standing solidly on its little plot of ground in the middle of the barn lot. It was built up off the ground on poles to make it harder for the varmints to get in the crib and so the corn could stay dryer. I’m guessing on that, but it sounds reasonable to me.
This corncrib looks a little different from the one on the farm where I grew up. This one appears to have a full door. My dad’s corncrib had a half door, so when you went to get corn for the chickens or the pigs, you had to climb up and crawl in if there wasn’t enough corn close enough to reach. Then there was a small opening up high on the crib where the farmer shoveled in the corn after picking it in the field. You can see that little door on this corncrib. Things like that are done by machine these days, conveyor belts, etc. Back in the day the machine was the farmer, and he shoveled the corn in flat scoop shovels and pitched it through that high window. I can still remember the sound of that shovel crunching down in a load of corn when my father was unloading the corn into the crib.
Anyway, this morning when we drove by that corncrib, memories popped up in my head and the dry dusty smell of the corn in the corncrib was suddenly in my mind. Of course, there was some mouse smell too because if you had a corncrib, the mice were ready to move in and enjoy easy living. My grandfather used to try to make their living a little harder by catching a big black snake to put in the crib. But my dad didn’t like snakes so I don’t think he ever did that. We did have plenty of barn cats that stayed busy keeping the mouse population down in the hayloft.
One of my cousins once had the fabulous idea of having a war against the mice and see how many we could kill in the corncrib. He thought it was fabulous anyway. I don’t think I was an enthusiastic participant, but he and his brother had a great time throwing things at the mice. Gave them some exercise anyway. Boys and mice.
I mostly remember fetching corn for the chickens and being worried a mouse might run out of the corn onto my hand. Also, under the crib made the best place for a dog or cat to hide when you were trying to catch them. I never really liked getting under the crib. In places it wasn’t bad since it was high enough off the ground that I didn’t have to crawl, but other places, those better hiding places for whatever critter I hoped to catch, were harder to get to. I also liked to catch a hen to stroke its feathers now and again the way Granny Em did in These Healing Hills. Granny Em was a fun character to get to know and a good place to have known her would have been around a corncrib. Having an ear of corn helps in catching hens.
My mother milked a few cows for a while and she would chop up the corn still on the corncobs to make food to put in the stanchions for the cows to eat while she did the milking. I remember how the hogs that were in a pen on the side of the barn that was only a few yards from the corncrib would start grunting, grumbling and squealing when they saw you at the crib because they wanted to be fed. I never got fond of the hogs. I was always a little afraid of them. So it never bothered me when we had hog killing day after they were fattened up on that corn from the corncrib.
While I didn’t think about it back then, now I can see that a full corncrib meant things were good on the farm and everything and everybody was going to have plenty to eat until it was corn picking time again.
Do you have any corncrib or farm girl memories?