Hi Friends, My family had a four room house, animal barn with corn crib, toilet, smoke house, and a dairy that was built of stone underground. Canned food, milk, butter, eggs, etc. were kept in the dairy which was the same cool temperature all year. Some families had a spring house built near or around the spring where they kept foods cool and safe from animals. A root cellar, a large hole in the ground, was used to store potatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes, apples, etc. during the winter. Straw and dirt were placed over the hole. I think many families owned small looms and/or spinning wheels, but the common people did the work in the warmth of their homes. The plantations had slaves who worked full time in the spinning houses that were built away from the main house. My great grandmother had her own child-sized spinning wheel when she was a small child in the 1860's. My knowledge of "short corn" is that it is the 'nubbins', or ears which were poorly formed or did not grow to the expected full size. The rows of corn near the forest where nutrients went to the trees or the rows where there was too much shade produced small ears. Also, the ears growing near the edges were not easily pollinated. The corn was just as good as that on the large ears, but the price would have been less. When I was a kid, we had to sort 'nubbins' from the good corn as it was picked. SueBee