9 BEAN CULTURE 



a flail were to be used, and the beans are turned as 

 before. The fanning mill is also called into play to 

 remove earth, leaves, etc, from beans. When either 

 one of these two methods is pursued, a smaller per- 

 centage of cracked beans will usually result than 

 when run through bean hullers. 



The third and modern way of thrashing beans is 

 the use of the machine or bean huller. This is con- 

 structed much as the grain separator ; in fact, the 

 ordinary grain separators are used in some cases by 

 changing the concaves slightly. With a good ma- 

 chine 1,000 bushels of beans is not an exceptionally 

 large day's work. The cost of the machine pro- 

 hibits the owning of one by every bean grower. 

 There is usually one in a neighborhood, sometimes 

 two. The owners make a business of thrashing out 

 beans for the farmers, charging as a rule, 5 cents a 

 bushel. The power for running the machine is 

 steam or gasoline. Some bean growers have a com- 

 plete thrashing rig of their own, and thus can thrash 

 their beans whenever they wish. This is not al- 

 ways the case when the thrasher man, who has a 

 dozen or more other jobs ahead, must be depended 

 upon. The advisability of using bean thrashers in 

 commercial bean growing districts is not questioned, 

 for while it is admitted more beans are cracked than 

 when the flail is used, the element of labor saved 

 more than compensates. The concaves in the ma- 

 chine may be so adjusted as to reduce the number of 

 cracked beans to the minimum, but in such adjust- 

 ment there is a possibility of getting them so far 

 apart that the beans will not be thoroughly thrashed 

 and seeds will be carried through the machine to the 

 straw pile. 



