The pinto beans are harvested with a pinto bean combine and pinto bean header.
This is how it works, gently lifting up the rows and moving them through the combine, where it breaks out the pinto beans and put them in the hopper

The trash—everything that is NOT a pinto bean is thrashed and left behind.  Now if you have cockaburs, sunflower seeds, or Canada Thistle seeds they will also be combined and flung into the hopper with the pinto beans.

Once there they all go into the truck and hauled to the Beanery, where we are docked for trash in the beans.  Therefore, now you know why we always hand weed our fields–the cleaner the beans the more money we bring home.  (You can see some of the ‘trash’ [in the back of our truck] which wasn’t cleaned out in with the pinto beans…this is also trash, which will dock us.)

The other problem, with those seeds, is when the pinto beans go over the shaker at the Beanery, they are the same size as a pinto bean and shake right with the beans.  If you have too many and have to have the pinto beans triple cleaned….well you get the picture.

A storm is coming in…I hope it stays far way.  If it rains we will have a mess with the pinto bean harvest in the field that is pulled.  😦

Your friend on a western Colorado farm,

Linda