How to clean dried beans
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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