I 3 2 



GARDEN FARMING 



the great amount of hand labor necessary to gather the crop. 

 Within recent years, however, labor-saving devices have been 

 invented so that the once laborious practice of pulling individual 

 plants is now done by means of a bean harvester. 



This machine is built on the principle of a pair of shears and 

 consists of two long steel blades mounted upon a strong frame- 

 work carried upon wheels, as illustrated in figure 42. The long 

 shearlike blades are so set that they will cut the roots of the 

 plants just beneath the surface of the ground. Above these blades 



, . | guard rods, or guide 



rods, are so arranged 

 as to move from their 

 original positions the 

 plants whose roots 

 have been severed. 

 The machine cuts two 

 rows of beans across 

 the field at a time, and 

 the plants of both rows 

 are thrown together in 

 a single windrow, as 

 shown in figure 43. 

 This clears a space for 

 the passage of one of 



FIG. 43. The two rows of beans are thrown 

 together by the harvester 



the animals in the 

 team, so that it is nec- 

 essary for only one to 

 pass through the standing crop, thus making the loss by shelling 

 much less than it would be if both animals were driven through. 

 After the plants are thrown together by the harvester it is cus- 

 tomary for men with ordinary pitchforks, either 2-tined or 3-tined, 

 to follow and place the beans in small heaps, as shown in figure 

 44, to cure for several days before being stored in barns or 

 sheds for threshing. In some instances, where the work is done 

 upon a very extensive scale and where the loss from shelling 

 is not considered sufficient to justify the employment of hand 

 labor for bunching the beans with forks, an ordinary horserake 

 is employed. 



