Being an Iowa girl, I don't really know anything about pasta harvesting. They only did that in the south-east corner of the state near Keokuk. Instead I remember when I was a teenager, the farmers would hire us girls to go out in the fields and de-tail the corn-dog plants.
Corn-dogs really need to be de-tailed, because if you don't remove the "puppydog tails," as they're called, the plants can become aggressive. There's nothing worse than a corn-dog field that's gone to wild horn-dogs.
We would climb on a wagon and ride around the field pulling the puppydog tails off the plants and throwing them into the middle of the wagon. When we got back to the farmyard, us girls would divide up the tails because they were quite valuable. Most of the ones we got were either pink or powder blue, but there were other colors, and those were worth more. If there were any yellow, green, or white ones, they went to the lead girl as a reward.
We would take the tails and sew them into boas, fans, and costumes to sell to exotic dancers. Iowa puppydog tail outfits became quite famous among exotic dancers. Any dancer who came to Iowa to get her outfits could really get some tail.
