Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... is put on deep, so the horses' hoofs do not cut the floor. Care should be taken all the time during 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 threshing 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 injury, 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 ar 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 extreme dry weather beans can be tramped well, the pods...
