While poking around the fruit stand in search of my favorite apples, I stumbled across what was clearly a dried bean shelling station.  Since I'm just getting into  growing my own dried beans, I was intrigued to see how a medium-scale operation like this cleans their beans without mechanical equipment.

As best I can tell, the beans are first hand-shelled, then this setup is used to separate the chaff, stones, and bad beans from the good beans.  A wooden frame with a relatively fine mesh stapled to the bottom sits on top of a table topped by crossed rebars.  I can just imagine tossing all of my shelled beans into the frame, shaking it vigorously, and watching bits of chaff and small, malformed beans drop out the bottom.

I'm sure it's not cost-effective to sell your homegrown beans after putting so much effort into their processing, but I don't mind putting in extra time to feed my own family more nutritious food.  As I learned when my father came to visit, shelling beans is a great thing to do with your hands while visiting.  I now have a solid cup of urd beans just waiting to be sprouted into about a gallon of bean sprouts.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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