196 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES. 



owners. It is tedious work, requires many animals and 

 exposes the beans to greater injury by early rains. A 

 threshing floor is made by wetting down a circular piece 

 of ground about sixty or eighty feet across, tramp it with 

 horses and wagon until smooth and hard ; then cover the 

 floor with straw for a few days until it is dry, when it is 

 ready for the beans. The first flooring of beans is put on 

 deep, so the horses ' hoofs do not cut the floor. Care should 

 be taken all the time during the threshing not to cut the 

 floor. Two or three big wagon loads of beans are placed 

 in a ring on this floor during very dry; clear weather. 

 Formerly horses attached to light wagons were driven 

 over the beans (usually two or three teams at a time), till 

 they were all shelled from the pods. The vines are then 

 thrown off and more beans from the field brought on. 

 This process is continued until there are many tons of 

 beans on the floor under those that are being threshed out. 

 After this the whole mass of chaff and beans is run 

 through winnowing and screening machines and the beans 

 placed in sacks of seventy-five to eighty pounds each and 

 are ready for market. Of late years the teams on the floor 

 are attached to disc machines instead of wagons, which 

 greatly facilitates the work. 



In suitable weather tramping is a less expensive method 

 than by machinery, but there is far greater danger from 

 sudden storms of rain, as beans on the tramping floor are 

 in the worst possible shape in wet weather. Beans in the 

 field can stand an inch or two of rain without much in- 

 jury, if allowed to thoroughly dry before threshing. But 

 beans wet on a tramping floor while mixed with pulverized 

 leaves are irreparably damaged, being stained and heated 

 before it is possible to clean them. Every farmer who 

 tramps out his beans should be provided with sheets of 

 canvas sufficient to cover all unwinnowed or sacked beans 

 liable to be left out during a shower. Tramping is a 

 tedious process, but it has some advantages. It is the 

 resource ever at hand to meet the exacting charges of 

 machine owners. And besides, during extremely dry 



