Reply To: Thresher and Winnower

[Crabapple Farm]

For up to about half an acre, I would recommend an actual flail. They really do work, though you have to make it correctly and use it correctly (like any hand tool). The swingle needs to spin freely around the staff, or else it is really frustrating. I like a light wood for the staff (alder, hazel, or an old broom handle) and something heavy and dense for the swingle (hornbeam, maple, or oak). My current design isn’t fancy, but it works well. The baling twine needs replacement now and again. Lucky we’ve got lots. The wire I use is 12.5g High Tensile fence wire. We had it on hand, I trust it not to fail, but it is a pain to work with. Needs to wrap around the staff groove tight enough that it can’t come off, especially if you’re going to thresh with other people (two people on a pile is nice, three only works if you’re all good at the waltz).
For use, don’t use the common definition of the word “flail” as a guide. Stand upright, hold the staff horizontal, and swing the swingle around the end of the staff so that it lands flat on the pile. At no time should any part be raised up high. Like using a scythe, you should be able to do it all day.

An All-crop definitely works for beans, though we’ve stopped using ours for beans. Several reasons: I’ve had too many break downs with our All-Crop, which has made me reluctant to fire it up (what’s going to break this time?). We’ve gotten into breeding beans, and it’s too hard to clean out the all-crop to know with confidence where an odd-colored bean came from. Some varieties tend to get damaged in the combine, either splitting in the threshing or getting crimped both under the apron chain and the grain auger. Possibly a better-condition machine with tighter tolerances wouldn’t have those issues.
I’m working on rebuilding an old Clipper (1A?? appears to be the original model), but for now we pour from bucket to bucket on a windy day, then use hand screens.
I would not recommend threshing and winnowing small grains by hand (and we’ve tried). But beans are actually quite reasonable to do that way.
We hand-pull our plants, windrow them on landscape fabric to dry, then load them on a haywagon to bring them back to the barn for threshing (or thresh in the field on a tarp).
Donn, historically, there used to be “Bean pullers” – a horse drawn machine that undercut the row then windrowed two to four rows together. I imagine something similar could be rigged on a cultivator, using a side knife to undercut, and a swathboard like attachment to windrow. Then you’d really want that pick-up head on your combine, though.

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