Nappanee hosts Indiana Corn Husking Contest

NAPPANEE, Ind. -- Nappanee hosted the Indiana Corn Husking Contest this Saturday. Kids, adults, and senior citizens partook in the statewide contest with every participant aiming to remove as many husks as possible from corn stalks within a 10 to 20-minute timeframe.

Contestants loaded their husked corn into horse-drawn wagon. A 20-pound sample is weighed to assess the overall cleanliness of the corn, which influences the final score. The process involved weighing and cleaning the corn to calculate the final score.

"So, when the Huskers going down through the field, they're trying to remove as many husks as possible." said Clay Geyer, the President of the Indiana Corn Husking Association, "They're trying to get as many pounds in the horse drawn wagon as they can. If they leave any ears behind, those go in a bag. If they miss the wagon, they have an opportunity to get the ears, but if they do not get the ears, those go in the bag, and count against them. When they get up there to the grading station, we take a 20-pound sample, and we're out of that. That 20-pound sample kind of gives us an idea how clean their corn is across the board of their net corn. So, then we have a graduated scale, and we grade them on how well they did, and we take the appropriate deductions.

"So, depending on what age group you're in, you get a certain amount of time to husk the corn." stated constant Shaylee Kelly, "You do as many pounds as you can, and, you know, 20-30, minutes. And then at the end, they shovel your corn out to weigh it, and it goes in like a milk crate, and they clean off you're the dirty corn. And then they do there's a special like calculation they do to be able to deduct your corn, and that's determine how dirty your corn is. You, of course, want it cleaner, but it's it doesn't always happen like that, and that's how they determine what your final weight is."