Mature Bean, Second cycle!

A cool morning to plant beans!

We finished Mature Bean project #2! This cycle it did not look as good as the first and we only harvested 4 quintals (100lbs sack) of beans. A disappointment, but a lot learned during the growing cycle too. Darwin wanted to try a different method of planting the bean seed, by using stakes. This is a traditional method used in our region by many farmers who's fields are on hill sides. With oxen it can be difficult to furrow the sides of hills and mountains full of rocks and boulders. Even though a large portion of the field we planted was flat, there was a rocky incline on the west side of our field. 

We hired some workers from the adjacent community to plant the seed. A total of six men, three stake the holes and three men following, filling the holes with a small portion of fertilizer, seed and covering the seed with soil. This is where experience of a planter is very necessary for straight rows and a consistent plant population. Planting lasted two days, after a slow start on the first morning. Two days was longer than we expected. We had a larger field but less yield. What did we learn? 

Make sure you have the best and most experienced planters for stake planting. Sometimes the men would plant more seed in a hole than we wanted. They may do this to finish sooner! 

The men who followed the seed planters were not paying much attention to how and where they were depositing the fertilizer, or not covering the seed well. 

We also planted to early in the season. There were light rains in the week prior to planting but the soil was still rather hard past a two inch depth. We were blessed with a soaking rain shower a day after planting, but this just uncovered a lot of seed and left them exposed. Our certified bean seed is of great quality, so in the end it did not affect germination. However, this can lead to a shallower start for the roots.  

We chose not to till the soil again, as stake plating should allow us to skip this step since the field was tilled in the last planting cycle. As stated, the soil was a bit to dry and we did not achieve ideal planting depth for the seed in some areas. 

As the bean plants matured it was evident that there were portions of rows left empty and this left large holes in the bean canopy. This allowed for stronger weed growth in between the plants. We had to go through with a hoe and manually remove the weeds two times during the growing season. We also found broken plants! It looked like some one was using our field as a short cut and decided to step on plants and break them on their walk! Over 50 plants were killed. One morning evidence of a cow was found in the field, after it left some dung. Good thing it did not eat many of the bean plants, it was scared off quickly by the neighbors. 

This year we have a new threshing machine! It was made by an agricultural business in the capital of Managua. We ordered the machine for it small size and easy portability in mountain terrain. Last harvest we threshed the beans by hand, and it took about three days in total to complete the work. With this machine we were done in four hours! How wonderful is technology! 

We learned the beans need to be very dry, and crunchy to run them through the machine. When we first started the plants were still humid and winding around the cylinder element. The best part about the machine, was it attracted a lot of attention from the men in the adjacent community. We spent a good hour talking about the machine, how God created our minds to invent and develop new technologies that save time and money. There is always a way to share our about our Lord Jesus Christ when we worship Him with our work!

Great times in the fields!