Navy Bean Harvest 101

The weather has turned cool, and it is time to make a big batch of bean and ham soup.  We just finished harvesting navy beans this week so we have plenty of beans available. 

Harvesting edible beans is unique.  The field may look like soybeans when you drive by at 55 mph, but harvest is quite different.  Think of the bag of beans you buy at the grocery store.  You don't want split beans, or mud stained beans, and it is our job to get those beans onto the shelf looking beautiful.

You can harvest navy beans with a regular combine, the same one you would use for soybeans.  It's the cheapest and easiest method.  We have specialty equipment that does a better job, but also requires a lot more work, and expense.  We actually travel through the field three times when we harvest our navy beans.  The first pass through the field is with a knife that cuts the bean plants.  Step two, pictured above, is to windrow the beans for the combine.  This is a sunrise picture.  You have to knife and windrow the beans while it is damp outside so you don't break open the bean pods.  The beans need to stay in the pods until the final combining step.  Kevin and Brian did our knifing and windrowing this year so if they looked a little tired and cranky, they were!  They were up at 1 or 2 am and working through the night so they could handle the bean plants without cracking open the pods.

Step three is the bean combine.  Ours is old, and held together with duct tape, chicken wire and the power of prayer, but it still works.  Amadas is actually a peanut combine manufacturer, and dabbled in edible bean combines for a few years.  We keep thinking the combine won't make it another year, but it still works and does a great job! 

You may notice the dirt cloud between the combine and tractor.   Harvesting navy beans is dirty, dirty, dirty.  And it's fine dirt that gets into every pinhole. 

Traditional combines have augers to move grain, but not this one.  We want to avoid using augers because they may split the beans, or even nick the seed coats.  If you ever soak dry beans, and a few float to the top, it is because the seed coat has been nicked.  You can't tell by looking at the bean, but you can watch them float because air got under the seed coat.  We use conveyors to put the navy beans into the bin, and in the bins we have ladders so the beans don't fall from the top to the bottom.  Instead the beans trickle down the ladders slowly.  Anything we can do to make sure they don't crack. 

We have raised pinto, black, kidney, and pink beans.  For the past few years we've stuck with one variety to make harvest easier.  No one wants a black bean in their bag of navy beans on the grocery shelf, so you really need to clean out everything when switching varieties.  Think of the equipment in the spring, and in the fall.  Planters, combines, trucks, conveyors, it's a lot of cleaning.  We'll stick with one variety to make our lives easier. 

I hope you get a chance to make a nice big pot of bean and ham soup.  It's the perfect dish for fall.  Or maybe I just love it because I know how much work it took to harvest those pesky beans.