Detassling Defined
Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 8:32AM First of all, thank you, thank you for listening to me yesterday. I wonder now why I waited so long to write about this! Thank you too, for your kind words, encouragement and advice. I read every word - several times.
Y'all are the best. Truly.
I'll revisit the topic soon, but today it seems that I need to answer some burning questions about detassling.
When I mentioned detassling on Monday I forgot that not everyone lives in the middle of a vast ocean of corn.
Yes, it's true that my house is in the city and the only crop I've every harvested is . . . nothing. And yes, the only livestock in my house are a Poodle, two Siamese cats and a gecko BUT you can't get three feet outside the city limits without hitting corn. In fact, when we moved in to this house there was a cornfield literally six houses down the street.
So, despite technically being city kids, my children know more about agriculture than the average suburbanite. Way more. Because what kids around here do in the summer is detassle corn.
From the website of the company my kids work for:
"Detasseling is the painstaking process by which we help to create hybrid corn. The farmer will plant rows of two different varieties of corn right next to each other. We remove the tassels at the top of the corn plant off of one of the variety of corns, so that it can't pollinate itself. We don't pull the tassels on the other variety of corn, and it becomes the "pollinator." The pollen from these plants falls onto the silk of the ears of the detasseled corn, thereby completing the crossbreeding process. "
Because the detassling season is so short (usually 3 weeks or less) normal child-labor laws do not apply. Kids as young as 12 (if they are at least 5 feet tall) can detassle corn. Reagan started last year
This year Hayden is joining her.
The reason kids are hired for this is that it's not difficult to do, but the conditions require young, strong, money-hungry bodies. Rain or shine, hot or cold, they get up before dawn to meet the company bus at 5:30 a.m. From there they drive to the fields where they walk rows as long as a mile, pulling the tassels.
If it has rained, it is muddy.
There are mosquitoes and other assorted crawly critters.
Sometimes the irrigation sprinklers come on.
Any exposed areas of skin develop a condition called "corn rash" from where all the leaves make little tiny paper cuts. What you don't see in that picture of Reagan is that she wore long socks with the toes cut off on her arms.
Some days they are done by noon. Other days they don't get home until dinner time.
Depending on the years of experience and the length of the season, they will bring home between $400-$1200 for this.
To a kid not old enough to be hired anywhere else, that is a LOT of money.
It had better be, because I've spent quite a bit this week getting them ready. Behold:
That is Hayden's gear. He needed rubber mucking boots, a back pack style 2 liter water container, trash bags to serve as rain gear and a hat.
Carhart of course. Because if you're going to do ag work, you need a Carhart hat. Besides, I was shopping for the gear at Tractor Supply and the choice was Carhart or John Deere and Hayden doesn't want to wear that shade of green.
Here's Hayden modeling his new gear.
Along with the hat, he'll have on a long sleeved shirt (probably the one he wears for swimming), a bandana around his neck, mosquito netting over his face, safety glasses, gloves and long pants.
If he's feeling accommodating next week I'll try to get a picture. No promises though. I'm predicting surly moods.
I also had to buy lots and lots of food.
This junk food assortment is not normal fare at Our Front Door but nutrition isn't really the goal here: quick calories that won't melt or smush easily is.
The granola bars get slipped into pockets for quick snacks in the middle of the corn because often lunch doesn't come until after 4-5 hours of work. In addition to the chips and cookies they'll get two sandwiches a piece and some cut fruit. The Bisquick is for me to make stacks and stacks of pancakes this weekend for the freezer.
Because I do not cook at 4:50 a.m.
The prep is all worth it. Rich and I both feel strongly that this is an important experience for the kids.
1) It puts them in touch with their farming roots.
2) They learn the realities of agricultural livelihoods. It's hard work and everything can change in a minute. Many kids signed up for detassling in this region lost their jobs this year when floods destroyed much of the corn crop.
3) It's good to know that manual labor is hard. If they choose to do it for a living, they'll know what they're getting in to. If they discover that they hate working that hard, it will inspire them to get a degree!
4) Earning money is a good thing.
5) The pride and sense of accomplishment of making it through a season are huge.
So my last expenditure is to run Hayden to the dr. this morning. He has hay fever and so I need to load him up with meds so he can walk through a pollen filled field all day.
Bucking for that Mother Of The Year award again!
Detassling, Hayden, Parenting, Reagan
Reader Comments (24)
Thanks for explaining this. And that is great money for kids. I grew up in an area with a lot of migrant workers to pick the fruit grown in Ontario's Niagara Peninsula, and they hired kids as temporary workers too. I just never had the time with my sports commitments and all. But I think it's very valuable to learn the value of earning some of your own money.
My husband did this growing up! He was a city boy too (Lincoln, NE), but made it out to the country a lot to detassle. It must have made an impact on him, because he tells me lots of tales. :) His brother went so far as to claim that he will send his son (still baking in the oven, but soon to arrive!) to Nebraska for a few weeks in the summer to detassle - says it would be a growing experience and will make him a hard worker. Hope your kids make as many memories as my husband did!!
Wow, that does sound like a great experience. Hard work, but great! I am a true believer in having kids do manual labor first thing.. that whole inspiration to go to college thing.
My son dug trenches for irrigation for his first job, his second job was detailing cars in the Texas heat... he has a degree and is a teacher now :)
Thanks for sharing!
First off:
Pancakes are freezable!?
Secondly:
I did not know what detassling was. I wish they had that here for my little sister. She could use a good, hardworking job.
Thirdly:
If you don't get mother of the year, I am making you an online bloggity award of awesomeness, in which you'll win 100 free fake points, and a "guilt-free" card that you can use on any occasion! Forget to make dinner? Guilt Free card! Don't want to do the laundry? Guilt Free card! Want to spend an evening pretending you don't have kids, in which you eat junk food and take a long hot bath? Guilt Free card!
I'll be thinking of them this week. That is some serious hard work.
Get this one...My 13 yr. old nephew lives on a farm (sixteen miles from a small town in western Nebraska) and they don't detassle there. He'd never even heard about it when Tyler mentioned it. And they think we are so suburban that we don't get farming!
So, I was pretty sure that 'detassling' involved the corn tassels, but I thought maybe it was AFTER the harvest. That sounds like a way hard job... I don't know if it's something I could EVER convince my children to do... they think HARD work is having to do more than one load of dishes in a day, or having to clean their rooms.
yeah, looked that one up myself. when i hear the word tassel i think strippers so i had to see what you were letting your kids get in to! =o) where i am from it is the tobacco that kids worked during the summer. i never wanted the money bad enough to work in a field all day in a hundred degree heat. i did enjoy the chicken stews at the end of the season though...
Sounds like a ton of fun!! I applaud you for having your kids do hard work! Someone at work was talking about how they make their kids load and unload the dishwasher and wash the clothes during the day in the summer and this other lady almost had a hard attack. "You can't make your kids work that hard in the summer!!! That's the parent's job" Uhh isn't that the reason you had kids?? Just kidding....sort of. Hopefully there is good detassling weather!!
I love that your kids get the opportunity to work so hard! Not only does it build character in a good way, but it also teaches them valuable lessons and work ethic. I'm pulling my ears of corn now at my garden...I never even heard of detassling. Im such a city girl.
To Aubrey: Leggo my Eggo.
WOW! That is a lot of money for young kids but good for them!
wow - that's a ton of money for me, let alone a kid! I seem to remember a post about this last year too, am I right? I think it's great that the kids have an opportunity to do that - teaches them responsibility not to mention a love of corn. :)
I am sooooo very glad that you let your kids detassel. It is a great learning experience for hard work, agriculture, and (once you get paid) money management as your children struggle to make their big summer bucks last forever.
A little lesson for those struggling to understand. (keep in mind I only grew up doing this, I don't have an agriculture degree so it is not gospel)
Not all corn is grown for cross pollinating a.g. Sweet corn is not cross pollinated like this (at least not that I've ever seen).
In the detasseling company that I worked for when I was young, we used to have "male" and "female" corn. The Male plants provided the pollen for the female plants, but the tassels of the female plants were pulled off so that they had the proper hybrid pollination for the corn. Detasselling has to be done before the female tassels pollenate their own seed (ears of corn) which prevents the cross polination process with the male's pollen.
And before you think that the terms male and female are horribly sexist to use for this because the female plants are mutilated, I will let you know that after the males pollinate the female plants, they are mowed down to the ground before harvest because, well, because they lack the right equipment to get the job done by themselves.
And that's a little bit more than you'd ever want to know about seed corn and cross polination.
Maybe I should take picture and do a guest post, ha ha ha.
To Screwed Up Texan: Du'oh. I'd forgotten about those. Mainly because we lived on cold cereal and whatever else we could find for ourselves as children and pancakes or any hot meal was either a novelty or or a disaster that we cooked for ourselves.
And thanks ;) Now those sound good!
I'm SO glad you explained - such an amazing experience. It's after things like this that I look back and feel deprived. Oh suburbia, the experiences you stole from me.
Holy cow! II would not have been tall enough to detassel until the end of my senior year of high school!
Those are GREAT reasons to have your kids do it. I wish mine could. I grew up in Kansas in the same kind of neighborhood. Our block was suburbia, but just past that were waving fields of grain. And now my kids live in the same kind of town in Canada. Full circle!
You're a good momma, Mindee! :)
Well, I just learned something about agriculture. My farmer is actually a seed dealer, but I don't know much about seed other than the fact that it's pretty colors when we get it. This looks like a great summer job. :)
Marla @ www.asthefarmturns.wordpress.com
corn rash? i was not aware of this down side of detassling. that, plus the unattractive gear one must wear makes me second guess letting tate do it next year. the money sounds good, but i'm not sure it will be worth the whining i will hear. actually, i may not even hear it. i'll be asleep while bill drives him to the bus at 4;50am.