Last Friday morning, Dave and I took an hour to go meet up with Carlos and John out in the field at the Panhandle Research Station. They called us to let us know that they were harvesting their test plots. When we got there, this is what we saw in the middle of a bare field.
Immediately, it grabbed my interest as I was expecting to see the combine rolling. All the beans were already off the ground and they were on to the next step. I was curious how they could get through all those little test plots of beans and keep them all separate for accurate data collection. Well, they shut down their operation as soon as we got there and explained the whole process to us. They pick the beans by hand and place them carefully in the big black garbage bags already labeled with the individual varieties.
As you can see from the picture above (taken by Dave Dietrich), all the big black garbage bags piled on the trailer. After they pile the bags on the trailer, they start thrashing them in that machine. It acts just like the combine and gets rid of all the chaff out the front and it spits the cleaned beans out the side where they collect in a bucket with a small labeled brown paper sack (shown in picture to the right). This is how they collect all of the samples to then take back inside and analyze for moisture, yield, check seed coat, and splits among many other tests. They must have their method down because they said this amount of bags would only take another hour or so. 
They had all kinds of beans, from small to big and all sorts of colors! Some I had seen before and others I had not. These beans that I am holding in my hand are called Cranberries! They are beautiful! To me, they look like big pinto beans with red strips instead of brown. Awesome combination. I cannot speak to how they taste, but they sure do have great presentation.
We had a great quick trip to the University to learn about their test plot harvest methods. Thank you for taking the time to explain them to us!
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