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Forgotten Tool: New Idea made more than manure spreaders. They made corn pickers, too.

Tom J Bechman 1, Editor, Indiana Prairie Farmer

September 22, 2021

2 Min Read
one-row, pull-type corn picker by New Idea
ICONIC MODEL: This one-row, pull-type corn picker helped New Idea become a household name on the farm in the mid-20th century.Tom J. Bechman

Perhaps some of you used a New Idea one-row corn picker. My dad picked with a two-row, mounted John Deere picker. But one year it broke when we were almost done. We borrowed a neighbor’s one-row New Idea to finish, but it was much newer than this model pictured here. It shelled off more corn on the ground than Dad liked, but the corn was dry.

You have two ways to qualify for the gift card drawing this month. Name the model number of this particular New Idea picker, or name the decade in which this model was produced. Send entries to [email protected] or P.O. Box 247, Franklin, IN 46131, or call 317-431-8766. Include your name and mailing address in your entry.

There is a reason old Prairie Farmer magazines from the 1950s and early 1960s are filled with ads for chicken feed, chicken equipment and even baby chicks. Almost every farm had some chickens back then. Apparently, a lot of Indiana farms had an egg washer, too. The egg washer pictured online and in the August issue of Indiana Prairie Farmer was invented by Walter Woodin, Laurens, Iowa, in 1956. It ran off electricity and gently moved eggs in the basket. Woodin called it an oscillating egg washer.

In the first two years that he sold them commercially, he sold 25,000 egg washers. He developed other models, and at least one historian also credits Woodin with inventing the hog farrowing crate. It’s known that his company sold hog crates for a while.

The winner of the drawing this month was Susan Van Meter of Laurel, Ind. Congratulations! Be sure to specify the model this New Idea picker is or in which decade it was built, and you might be the lucky winner next time.

About the Author(s)

Tom J Bechman 1

Editor, Indiana Prairie Farmer

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