—Lancaster Farming, Saturday. Jan. 31, 1976 50 1910 soybeans raised eyebrows Editor'* Note: The following story, submitted by William Stoltzfua, la about bis “Adventure* in Growing Soybean*” when tbc crop waa atlll very ranch of a novelty. Stoitzfna grew tfae “strange” beans in tbe early 1100’a on hla farm near Atglen. Now living in Wilmington, Del., he teila of all the cariosity, problems, and surprises which were invoU > d in raising, harvesting, processing, and feeding the beans. By WILLIAM L. STOLTZFUS When we consider the millions of bushels of soybeans that are grown in the United States, tbe thousands of products that are made from some derivative of them and the large number of individuals that are employed in the manufacture of these products, then indeed it would appear as if some Rip Van Winkle had suddenly appeared after a long nap and had spoken of raising soybeans as an adventure. However, when I planted a bushel of soybeans on my farm, in Chester County, Pa. in 1910, it was indeed an adventure as I had never seen a soybean and did not know of anyone in our neighborhood who did. I got a bushel of Ohio 9035 beans from a grower in Ohio and also 100 lb. of sou to inoculate the beans. (This was a large brown bean with many branches and more treelike than most of the varieties that are grown today.) The planting in structions I received' were to use 20 pounds of seed per acre and plant about 10 days after com planting time - which is still a good time to plant. To plant I used an old seven hole grain drill which planted 2 rows 28 inches apart, after dosing up some of the spouts. I had some very favorable weather and in just one week the beans were coming through the ground. To inoculate the beans, the soil was run through the same spouts that were sowing the beans. The soil ran out when I was finishing the last round and the good results of the inoculation were apparent. The beans were planted along the road and were quite a curiosity. A number of farmers stopped and inquired as to what I was growing. One Saturday evening a young knight and his lady friends came driving down the road. She looked at the beans and asked, “What’s that?” He gave one sweeping look at the snail beans and promptly replied. “Strawberries!” When jt came time to harvest the crop, some of my troubles started. I was told to put them on a stack to cure out before threshing them, so I cut them in the morning with a mower when they were still damp so as to avoid shelling the beans. I then raked them up with an old-fashioned dump rake and put them on a stack to cure. The rake did a good job but also raked up some small stones which became apparent when we began threshing the beans. This made a lot of trouble. I prevailed upon my neighbor who had a small hand-fed thresher, to do the threshing. After changing some of the pulleys so as to slow down the cylinder speed, we proceeded to thresh. This proved to be a very dirty job and when we were finished, my neighbor said, “Don’t ask me to thresh soybeans again!” The yield of the beans was good (about 30 bushel per acre) but about one fourth were broken or cracked due to a too fast cylinder speed. I cleaned the beans with a hand-turned cleaner as electricity in the rural areas was still quite a few years around the comer. I had separated the splits from the whole beans but now what was I going to do with them? I had a crop for which there was no market! After some correspondence with an Ohio seed firm, I sold the whole beans for $1.60 a bushel, which was a fair price with com at 50 cents and wheat at 75 cents a bushel. Now I was nd of the whole beans but what was I going to do with the splits? The beans were supposed to be good cow feed and as I had a small dairy, I took a few bags of the splits to town to get ground. The miller fed the beans into the Monark READ LANCASTER FARMING FOR FULL MARKET REPORTS Electric Generating Systems Built to Your Specifications Manual or Automatic Diesel - Gasoline - L P. Gas - -tv#’ T— A Martin Isaac W. Martin, Owner Pleasant Valley Rd., RD2 Ephrata, PA (717) 733-7968 Sales - Service Electric Plants Burr Mill about as fast as shelled com but had barely gotten started when the mill stalled down completely. The beans proved to be rather oily and gummed up the works. After some delay, we got started again and by feeding the mill slowly, we finally got tbe grinding done. Then I was told, "These beans may be good cow feed, but don't bring any more around here to be ground!” For our cow feed, we mixed equal parts of ground beans with cottonseed meal plus com and cob meal to give the desired protein ratio. This made a rather heavy and un palatable mixture and the cows did not eat it as readily as desired. Later we added bran and com distiller grains to the mixture and the cows ate it better. When our ground beans got all, then the problem was how to get more ground. We finally got the idea of mixing the beans with the ear corn. After weighing out the desired ratio of beans to ear corn, we put the ear corn in the bag first and then used the beans to fill out the empty spaces as needed. Since the ear com was dry, this worked very good and we had no more grinding problems. This is still a good method - grinding ear com and beans together. Despite our problems, we still had “bean fever” so the next year we put out S acres, expecting to harvest them with the grain binder or at least try to. This was fairly successful and certainly a lot better than raking them up and putting them on a stack. We cut the beans when the pods were brown and the stalks still had considerable sap, using the binder only in the morning when the stalks were still tough but not wet. We set the packers as light as we could but it was hard on the packers and tying arrangement. Our chief trouble was with the burly stalks stopping the binder by getting between the slats and canvas. Finally, after using considerable of the “patience of Job” and the “wisdom of Solomon”, we got the beans cut and on shocks. Thus we had another curiosity on the farm. Shocks in July were expected but not in October! This required more explaining. When the shocks were well dried, they were hauled in the bam to finish curing as was the custom at this time with a good portion of the wheat crop. But the crop was still to be threshed. There were still a good many small wheat threshers around that had once been used with the now forgotten horse power. I purchased one of these still in good condition for $25. Then 1 proceeded to change the pulleys around so as to run the cylinder at a much slower speed than in our previous experience. We removed all the concaves except one which we dropped as low as we could. For the missing concaves, we substituted oak planks. After a little more curing, threshing was accomplished with a five horsepower gasoline engine. Think Big. 3 Single Beater PTO spreader—built to make short work of those big spreading jobs. Optional Upper Beater Breaks up big hunks, j^. shreds the load for better "Tr^Cl spreading pattern... adds load-carrying capacity, as r^a|p 2-Year Warranty on Chain. When you think big, think conveyor chain. This giant has a super Heavy Duty Chain (20,000 lbs. tensile strength) that’s backed by this full 2-year warran Stop in. We’re thinkii f>ig on trades... righ r STOLTZFUS FARM SERVICE Ccchranville PA 215 593 5280 CHAS J. McCOMSEY & SONS A.B.C. GROFF, INC. Hickory Hill. PA New Holland 215 932-2615 717-354 4191 A. L. HERR&BRO. Quarryville 717 786-3521 ROY H. BUCH, INC Ephrata RD2 717 859-2441 LONGENECKER FARM SUPPLY Rheems 717-367-3590 N. G. HERSHEY & SON Manheim 717-665-2271 LANDIS BROS.. INC Lancaster 717-393 3906 M.S.YEARSLEY &SONS West Chester 215 696 2990 The results were better than expected. Few beans wei cracked or left in the straw. The threshed residue cootalnc quite a lot of leaves, small branches, bean pods, and an o casional bean which made good roughage. Some heifers th we had were fed on this all winter and came through in got condition with nothing else to eat. We tried several other experimental harvesters but nor were quite as good as our own machine. Nothing did aa muc to expand the acreage grown in soybeans as the coming of tl small combine which the fanner could buy and use on h own farm. PLAN NOW FOR THE 1976 SEASON WE WILL • REVIEW SOIL TESTS • ANALYZE FERT. REQUIREMENTS • ARRANGE FOR FERTILIZER AND PESTICIDE NEEDS INSURE A CROP WITH PROPER FERTILIZATION. 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Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers