Detassle - contracting
- Thread starter twojman
- Start date
its sad, I contracted for Pioneer for quite a few years and I think Dekalb still contracts in the north part of the state.
for you kids: crews are ********. you are getting robbed blind be fat old guys that drive you around in a school bus.
I've detasseled since I was 6 (actually just walked behind my parents carrying the water jug because they didn't have a sitter). In our heyday my Dad & brothers and I did 55 acres a year. At MINIMUM we made $14 an hour ... and thats for a really crappy field that had all kinds of spikes and small corn and we had to go over 3 or 4 times. Most times when we got a decent field we'd make $25-35 and hour and every once in a while if we nailed in on the first pass we'd make mroe than that.
crews will pay like $6-8 bucks an hours to mow through corn all day with no end in sight ... they're evil
This. My first crew I was on paid $8 an hour (not a good thing). Heck the bus driver probably got paid more and all he had to do was drive us to the field and then sit on a lawn chair waiting for us to get done. My second group instead of getting paid by the hour I got paid by the acre. I am not sure what it evens out to be per hour but I made $460 for the entire summer on my first group and $2000 with the second group. If you have the option to get paid by the acre, DO IT! :wink:
I did it for one summer when I was 13, for two days. On the second day, I got heat exhaustion (the heat index was like 115 that day), collapsed in the field, and got carried back to the bus. At the end of the day I was "released". Made me decide I wanted a job with A/C. Yep, I'm a pansy, and I'm loving it.
I only detasseled one year in college in addition to my regular job. I worked for a coworker at my job who contracted acres so I was able to get a little better rate with him than on a big crew.
We were doing mile long rows in sweltering heat and humidity one day so I decided to dump the shirt for a round trip. About a third of the way into the row the sky opened up and it started pouring. I got a little chilly and the corn leaves got real heavy with the rain. By the time I got back to the starting point almost two miles later my nipples were bleeding from all of the little cuts (think hundreds of paper cuts) from the heavy corn leaves. I never could get how two of the girls on our crew could detassel all day every day in bikinis.
It was some good extra money, but I couldn't see doing it regularly.
Ah yes, the dreaded corn rash. After a long, hot, muddy day you get home and hit the shower. The hot water hits your corn rash riddled body and bam! It feels like you are on fire. Good times, good times.
And sitting around forceably straightening the fingers of your hands since they don't seem to be able to totally straighten after a few days of detasselling.
So it more or less is like "culling" would be in livestock...especially for breeding stock herds. I never knew that...I missed out on de-tassling but walked miles of beanfields...of course Round-up ready wasn't on the scene yet.
I run a crew every summer out of the Monsanto plant in Boone. It is extremely tough to get acres for established crews. One crew that worked fields by Madrid last summer originated in Carroll every day. Most acres that are seed corn are spoken for -- it is unusual for a field to not already have been assigned. The only way I got my acres is the contractor decided to "retire" and left me his crew.
Contracting is good money but (1) it gets tougher and tougher to find kids willing to last an entire season and (2) the seed corn companies are moving to 20 inch rows which means higher plant populations per acre but no higher payout (at least, not yet). So your labor costs are higher without an increase in revenue.
Contracting is good money but (1) it gets tougher and tougher to find kids willing to last an entire season and (2) the seed corn companies are moving to 20 inch rows which means higher plant populations per acre but no higher payout (at least, not yet). So your labor costs are higher without an increase in revenue.
I don't really know what culling livestock is, but it sounds like the same principle. Anyway, I always preferred roguing to detasseling. The corn isn't as tall at that point, so you get fewer corn cuts, and since you're chopping out plants with a good bean hook instead of using your hands you don't get the cramping either.
I don't know if something has been developed to eliminate the need for roguing, but I do know that it seems like I see fewer and fewer crews out in the field every summer.
I worked for a company called Oetting's in high school. Their trick was to tie a bunch of attendance bonuses in with the base pay for the kids on the crew. Basically, you were screwed if you missed even one day. The kids who made it out every day averaged around 10-12 bucks an hour (good money for a 14 or 15 year old), and the ones who missed time came out to anywhere from 6-8 bucks an hour (not so good). Every summer you had maybe a half dozen kids with perfect attendance. It's tough to find a teenager who can drag *** out of bed at 5 am or earlier every day to go work in some of the crappiest conditions imaginable for three or four consecutive weeks.
I'm not exactly sure where you are getting your information but there is no such thing as tassleless corn. Sterile female, sure but not tasseless.
I pollinated last summer and I actually enjoyed it. Sounds crazy but there was good looking girls, nice people, got to work with my friends, and the pay was good for the short time we worked.
Exactly. It's not exactly exciting work but it is what you make of it. I'm not sure why good looking gals flock to that job, but they were around when I did it also. Some women are just addicted to the sun I guess.
The good times.
I crew detasseled for $3.35/hour. And we LOVED the money (but hated the work for all the reasons previous)! On Sundays we got double-time. At the end of the summer we all bought mo-peds. Pretty big deal for 14-year old kids. Thinking back, I can't believe the company management could sleep in good conscience knowing they'd ripped off kids so much.
I'd heard great stories about the hot babes who detasseled. My crew was all DUDES.
We detasseled in one muddy field even though it hadn't rained for days. We were mystified until someone pointed out the hog confinement facility at the top of the hill.
Had a few strangers on the crew from Ohio. They found a large marijuana patch and were never seen again.
A few years later, one of the guys from the crew was killed in a double-murder-drug-deal-gone bad. Obviously, that was a big deal for small-town Iowa.
Ah yes, the good times. Hope you get some acres.
I crew detasseled for $3.35/hour. And we LOVED the money (but hated the work for all the reasons previous)! On Sundays we got double-time. At the end of the summer we all bought mo-peds. Pretty big deal for 14-year old kids. Thinking back, I can't believe the company management could sleep in good conscience knowing they'd ripped off kids so much.
I'd heard great stories about the hot babes who detasseled. My crew was all DUDES.
We detasseled in one muddy field even though it hadn't rained for days. We were mystified until someone pointed out the hog confinement facility at the top of the hill.
Had a few strangers on the crew from Ohio. They found a large marijuana patch and were never seen again.
A few years later, one of the guys from the crew was killed in a double-murder-drug-deal-gone bad. Obviously, that was a big deal for small-town Iowa.
Ah yes, the good times. Hope you get some acres.
the reason for rogueing is to preserve the purity ... not so much mutant corn, although you can cut that off too... moreso for any "hybred" corn that somehow got in with the purebred stuff. hybreds are 99% of the time a more robust verison (the kind they plant for production) and therefore look like giants among the frail looking purebred stuff. because one "rogue" tassel can pollenate a lot of ears they want it all cut out (they give you sharpened shovels to cut it out).
Detasseling is where you cross two kinds of purebred corn in a single field by removing the male part (tassel) of one variety and letting the other one pollenate it (that one is then mowed down before harvest of the hybred ears).
pollenating is just super accurate detasseling cross where you actually put bags over the tassel (male) and ear silk (female) and the once the pollen drops into the bag you move the appropriate bag down to the ear silk you want it to pollenate. this is usaually done on smaller plots (thankfully as its a lot of busy work).
that's Corn Sex 101 for you.
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back in the old days (mid-90s) you could get about $1k an acre for wheel-pulled stuff. $3.50/hr is downright child abuse.
So regular pollinating is equivalent of a married couple going at it, and cross pollinating would be cheating on your spouse or perhaps swingers?
I remember that rash. No fun.
You could always tell when you had had enough of detasseling when you have the "Corn Dream." Always row after row of corn in your dream.
well "pollenating" in the sense its being used in this thread is one-on-one corn action ... but corn having its own set of both parts can actually be the male AND the female in this interation. every kernal is like a baby, and the goal of pollenating is to make sure not even one of those kernals comes out looking like the mail man. those kernals will be used as purebred stock.
the big fields that you detassel are crossing two specific varietys with traits you want but you dont necessarily care which male & female get it on as long as they all of the specific type you want ... so like a swingers party where you only allow blond females and dudes above 6'. you want blond tall babies - but in this scenerio they don't have to do themselves because you've forced one to be the male and one to be the female (the detasseling part) and you want the hybred kernals. they will be planted next year in the production feilds (the normal corn most farmers plant).
Once its in the production fields its a hybred, and while farmers like their type of hybred to pollenate its particular ears (tall blond & tall blond) they don't necessarily care if the neighbors tall redheads pollenate a few - because in the end its all tall, regardless if there are a few strawberryblondes, its just gonna get fed to cows anyway.
whew ... that felt dirty, but I swear its not. its just corn.
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