Iowa Corn King Honored With Two New Sculptures

Iowa Corn King Honored With Two New Sculptures AG WORLD 33-5-24 Two new steel sculptures at Iowa fairs remind growers of one farmer's amazing feat. In 1946 Don Radda set a world record growing a 31-ft., 7/8-in. tall corn stalk. One of the corn stalk sculptures has a permanent home at the Washington County Fairgrounds. The other is in the Agriculture Building at the state fair in Des Moines. Long-time FARM SHOW readers may remember a 1987 article (Vol. 11, No. 6) about Radda, whose record remains unbroken. "Dad was the tall corn winner from 1939 to 1967, and he also won heaviest and biggest ear contests and had incredible yields," says daughter Julie Zieser, who still farms the family farm with her husband, Wayne. Zieser won't give away all the family's corn growing secrets, but she shares that her father preferred Mexican white corn varieties, and pages of notes show that he experimented with a variety of greenhouse fertilizer blends. He also kept his plot of contest corn near the house "where he could baby it." He fenced it in so animals couldn't get near it, made scaffolding to support the stalks, and tied gunnysacks over the tassels so the stalks would continually grow to get to sunlight. "He was a determined, intelligent and talented man," Zieser says. "He was also Iowa's first Master Corn Grower winning yield contests with 221 bu./acre corn in 1948 and 209 bu./acre corn in 1949 without modern technology or special seed." Tom Evans of Evans Welding created one of the steel stalk sculptures and her husband, Wayne, made the other. Zieser and other family members are pleased that her father will be remembered with the sculptures. Radda died in 1967 when he was just 65. He and his corn made headlines in Life magazine and newspapers across the U.S., and the record was listed in "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" and the "Guinness Book of World Records." At a July dedication of the Washington County Fair sculpture, special guests included some of the women (now nursing home residents) who stood on ladders next to Radda's 1946 cornstalk. A popular postcard was made of the photo of the women and the corn stalk. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Julie Zieser, 1934 200th St., Washington, Iowa 52353 (ph 319 653-4495; zfarm@cloud burst9.net).

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