The corn planter does five jobs in one trip down the field. It makes trenches for two rows of corn. It drops corn seeds into the trenches. It drops fertilizer alongside to give food to the young plants. It covers the seeds. And it leaves a mark all along the field to show exactly where the tractor should go to plant the next row of seeds. Dan follows the mark very carefully. All the rows must be exactly the same distance apart, because the tractor will have to go through the field again to cut out the weeds after the corn starts to grow. If the rows are badly spaced, the tractor wheels will squash some of the plants.
When Dan was a little boy, he used to help his father hoe the corn by hand, getting rid of weeds and loosening the soil. Now he has an implement called a cultivator which does the job.
After the corn is well up, Dan pulls the cultivator through the field, driving carefully, with the wheels between the rows. Small blades on the cultivator cut through the weeds and break the soil into loose chunks. The pictures show several kinds of cultivator blades.
All summer long the corn grows tall. Dan waits till the ears are dry before he harvests them, ready for his cows and chickens to eat in winter.
Dan’s farm is small, so he can’t afford to buy a big corn-picking machine. But his neighbor Al has one that he rents out, and one morning Dan drives it to his cornfield. His tractor seems lost inside the picking machine. Gatherers that look like the pointed snouts of huge mice creep along in front of the tractor close to the ground. One by one the stalks of corn go into the machine, which snaps the ears off. Then revolving claws and rubber paddles rip off the husks, and an elevator carries the clean ears back to a wagon which the tractor pulls along. In a very short time, Dan’s whole field is done.