HUDSON, Ind. – A northern Indiana man credits his Amish upbringing on a dairy farm for recently winning the state and national titles in corn husking along with his prior top finishes in the competitions.

Kevin Lambright, 46, of Hudson, was also the state and national corn husking champion in 2023.

He started competing in 2020, nearly 30 years since Lambright husked his last ear of corn before leaving the family farm near Topeka. One of his chores while growing up was husking corn before and after school to provide feed for his family’s 30 or so dairy cows.

He also helped milk the cows, which everyone in his family did manually. “It made for strong hands,” he said.

Lambright won the national competition on Oct. 18 for the second time at Reed Farms in Nappanee by husking a whopping 475 pounds of corn in 30 minutes. With deductions for cobs not perfectly stripped, his net total was still just over 458 pounds.

Lambright said he was surprised by the amount, which was his personal best.

“Sometimes, everything goes your way when you’re husking. You don’t drop any.  You don’t get tired. I just literally had a great day,” he said.

In comparison, he won the state title on Oct. 4, also at Reed Farms, with just over 361 pounds of corn husked in 20 minutes.

Lambright was also the 2024 state champion corn husker, but he did not compete that year in the national competition in Iowa due to a conflict with his job at Cedar Creek RV, a maker of recreational vehicles in Topeka.

“I chose to work, instead,” he said. 

Currently, he’s an assistant plant manager with the company he’s been with for 26 years.

During harvest, Lambright said he husked corn every morning from daybreak until jumping in the shower and heading off to school. Husking corn is what he did after school, too, along with his other chores like milking and feeding the cows until dark.

He also fed the dozen or so draft horses his family used to pull plows during spring planting and wagons to bring in the crops in the fall.

“I think what helps me is I done it for that long while growing up,” he said.

Lambright said his younger brother, Atlee, was competitive at husking corn when he was approached by a man looking for entries in the contests he staged.

“He wanted us to compete. I decided I’ll go give it a shot,” he said.

Lambright said he competed against his brother that year and lost. He also wasn’t a top finisher in the state and national contests but placed second the next two years at the national level.

Lambright said Atlee hasn’t competed in about five years but likes to joke that he would beat him again if he ever got back into it.

He also likes to poke fun at his older brother, Duane, who’s also a former competitive corn husker.

“I always tell them they’re afraid to get back in because they know I’m going to beat them,” he said.

Like he did as a kid, Lambright wears a galvanized steel hook on his right hand to slice the skin over each cob before peeling it off and throwing the stripped cob into a wagon.

His secrets to success include keeping his hands close together while tossing each finished cob into the wagon next to him.

“If you stretch your arm all the way out to make a throw and then all the way back that takes up a lot of time,” he said.

He said knowing where the next ear is before reaching to rip it off the stalk is another time saver.

Lambright said he doesn’t know how much longer he’ll keep competing but would like to pass down the tradition to his children, ages 7 and 5, who he took to competitions the past two years.

“I would like to get them started,” he said.