Traditional pea harvesting

[Andy Carson]

I have read that before mechanization, field peas were often harvested with horse drawn rakes which would physically pull the pea vines out of the ground when the vines were green. The uprooted vines were then dried and peas thrashed. Has anyone seen this method in action??? Thoughts???

[Mac]

Andy,
I have never actually seen this done… however, I have heard my granddaddy tell me about doing this when he was a kid. They would actually cut them with a mower, then rake them up, stack them, and either thresh them out or feed them vines and all to the livestock. I have fed peas like this as well, but I hauled them in out of fields that had been either beat down by hail or were to wet to pick at harvest time.
Mac

[near horse]

Aren’t there some drawings of options/extras for the JD or MD mowers for cutting peas in Haying w/ Horses or maybe in the Mower Book?

[Tim Harrigan]

Some mowers use or have vine lifters but I am not aware of the rake harvesting method that Andy mentioned.

[Andy Carson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SMRFmN1FDs

Here is a link to a Sund lifter mechanism designed for combine usage. They demonstrate the lifter in field peas that have not been swathed, and the rake simply feeds the mat of peas from the field into the combine. A very similar mechanism to a simple rake… Not having to swath the peas might make me redesign my pea field. I am only familiar with the “swath and dry” technique. This “direct pickup” technique is new to me too. It does seem to work though, both with the horse drawn rake that I read about and this very modern lifter system. I wonder if the moisture would have to be “just right” though… I also wondered if the horse drawn system is tougher to get to work than it sounds, so I wanted to check to see if anyone has seen it work. I would bet this is a “pre-mower” technique and might be somewhat lost in time.

[Tim Harrigan]

How do you plan to thresh the peas? Why don’t you want to swath them? Were you thinking of using a knife cutter to pull them?

[Andy Carson]

Good questions Tim. I still don’t know how I’m going to thresh my peas, but it is probably going to somewhat barbaric and “low throughput”. I am not extremely concerned about it though, because I think the market for fried peas is probably not really high and a lot of the peas are going to end up as chicken and pig food. I won’t thresh the animal food. I don’t have any specific complaint about swathing, I just don’t own a mower. I keep thinking about getting one and then figuring out ways around it. I probably will at some point in the future but I have a lot of equipment to buy and make still and things I can get by without are not high on my priority list. I hadn’t really thought about the knife cutter or other mechanisms, as I wanted to see if the concept made much sense in the first place. I was really hoping someone had seen this technique used with horses and I could simply “copycat.” The Sund mechanism makes me think the idea is sound though…

[Tim Harrigan]

I have done some work with dry bean harvest. You may be able to adapt a bean knife cutter for peas. Not sure though, I have never mechanically harvested peas, just garden peas.

[goodcompanion]

@Tim Harrigan 23763 wrote:

I have done some work with dry bean harvest. You may be able to adapt a bean knife cutter for peas. Not sure though, I have never mechanically harvested peas, just garden peas.

How is a bean cutter knife different?

[Tim Harrigan]

I am not sure exactly how they harvest peas. With dry beans they have a set of knives that run an inch or two under the rows to cut the roots and then a set of windrowing rods merges those two rows into a single windrow. These are still somewhat common but may growers are going to direct-cut with a combine head or rod-cutters that require quite a bit more power.

[near horse]

Conventional dry peas (split greens and yellow peas) are allowed to dry on the vine – and just combined although they do use “lifters or elevators” on the header. I think it’s mostly to keep the knife out of the dirt since you’re running it at ground level and the elevators (shoes really) look like those from the old days (that go on HD mowers). The peas thresh out in the combine pretty nicely since they’re heavier than normal cereal grains – main concerns were with breakage (of the peas). I think it’s the same with garbs.

Lentils, on the other hand, are swathed and allowed to dry. Then combined.

Correct me if I’m wrong but many crops (cereals and peas for example) now are allowed to mature or dry while standing in the field because they will be directly harvested and threshed in one pass. Historically, I think these same crops were cut at an earlier stage or at least while still a bit green so as to keep the grain from being lost in the handling required to get to the thresher. Does that make sense and is it right?

[Tim Harrigan]

Geoff, direct harvesting has really taken over dry bean harvest in the last several years. I am sure there are many growers still pulling and windrowing with a knife cutter. I suggested it because I think it is a realistic option for Andy using animal power. That and a simple thresher would probably work fine. New combine for Andy?…..maybe not.

[near horse]

Tim,

You might have missed my point or I did a bad job making it. I was just describing current dry peas/lentils harvesting thinking that understanding that might generate thought into ways of harvesting that are suited to smaller/horse driven production systems. Certainly the idea of buying a new combine is beyond foolhardy at > $200,000. Sorry if I even sort of insinuated that was something to look at.

[jac]

For what its worth combining peas is a sure fired way to bring on a heart attack or a nervous breakdown… If the sun is on them , then its not too bad.. soon as the sun goes off them shut the combine down. Other than that they are easy to thresh.. wide open concave and plenty wind and slow rotor speed should see a good sample. I can imagine cutting them greener would be a nightmare and the timing would need to be spot regards drying time.. too dry and a lot of peas will be left in the field… some of the small trailed combines can be pulled with horses ..
John

[Tim Harrigan]

Geoff, I know, I was just goofing around. T

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