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| Hoopeston,
Illinois |
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Hoopeston is located in Vermilion
County along Highway 1 near the Indiana state line.
It has long been known as the "Sweet corn Capital
of the World." In addition, it has come to
be known as the home of the “cornjerkers”
because it is the team name for Hoopeston High School.
The emblem of an ear of corn first appeared on the
team uniform in 1930. In 1965, the mascot known
as "Jerky", the walking ear of corn, was
born. |
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| In a time before modern machinery,
when work was done by hand and horsepower was measured
in mules, sweet corn was pulled or jerked from the stock.
The leaves were shucked off and the golden ears were thrown
in a wooden wagon pulled by a team of mules. This was
Cornjerking. |
 In
other parts of the United States, this harvesting process
may have been known as corn snapping, corn shucking, or
corn husking. The many laborers who walked the fields
to harvest the crops were called Cornjerkers. The invention
of the corn-picking machine has made this hand harvesting
process obsolete. As a result, the term Cornjerker as
used in the agricultural industry has become a colloquialism. |
 Nowadays,
the work that is done by hand in the cornfields is detasseling.
Much of this work is done by migrant farmworkers who walk
through the fields pulling the tassel off of the corn
plant to control the production of seeds for the big seed
companies. |
 In
addition to corn, there are many other crops in Vermilion
and the surrounding counties of central Illinois with
which migrant farmworkers are involved. These include
asparagus, beans, pumpkin, bell peppers, squash, tomatoes,
onions, spinach, chives, radishes, cucumbers, vegetable
plants, horticultural plants, and sod. |
| Migrant farmworkers work in all aspects
of fieldwork: planting, harvesting, hoeing, detasseling,
weeding, cultivating, bunching, picking, thinning, packing,
and loading. |
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