Oh Beans!

For anyone interested in machines as Elder Parkerson is this might be an interesting blog entry. On Monday morning upon
arriving at work we discovered that the "harvesters" had arrived from the canning company with their giant machines. These machines are primarily designed to harvest just string beans!
This picture shows the side discharge shoots.

This is a huge "dump cart". The beans are often offloaded from the hopper on the harvester into this cart drawn by a tractor back to a waiting open top 40' trailer.

I got to get up into one of these interesting machines to get a basic explanation of how they work. There is a 6" brush on the bottom front which "sweeps" the bean plants towards the opening. Just under the "deck" are rows of fingers which tear up the whole bean plant, leaves, pods and all. The beans mostly fall off the plant and the whole mess drops onto a conveyor belt which runs under very large fan. The air currents from the fan lift up the lighter bean leaves and plant, grind it up and discharge it out the side. The string beans then continue up the conveyor belt into the hopper on the back of the harvester.

Several of these 40' long open top tractor trailer's left the Hill Cumorah property destined for the big cannery in Geneva. They will be canned up there and marketed under most of the

common product labels with which we are all familiar. Saw all the same beans going into the truck but cannot tell you what the difference will be between the Libby's string beans and the Great Value string beans. I guess you'll have to taste the difference between the beans which all came from the same truck?

Harvesters out in the fields early in the morning. I have no idea how many acres are here just that the fields run for over a mile!