Cornstalk shocks on a Dover field in the early 1900s

Across Sussex County, corn in fields without irrigation was beginning to burn up in July. Some of it was saved by the rainy spell that started Saturday; for some fields the rain came too late after an extended dry spell. Before combines and tractor-mounted corn pickers, farmers would cut their corn in the early fall and stack it in shocks in their fields to dry before storing it in corn cribs as feed for the winter.