Brad Leggett watches intently to make sure all shelling equipment is working properly.
When working at capacity, this equipment will shell and clean five bushels of butter beans in less than two minutes.

Many people seem to think that farming is a very simple profession. Those who do not have a farm background may think that all a farmer has to do is to either own or rent some land, plant some seeds, plow the crops once in a while, and harvest the crop in the fall.

Even those who recognize that farming is a little more involved than this often fail to recognize just how complex modern farming actually is. Farming today has become so specialized that successful farmers must learn and use many different skills. Production costs for all commodities are extremely high. Market prices tend to be low. Outside forces, such as weather, unexpected diseases, or even political unrest half a world away, can turn a potentially good year into a disaster.

I work with farmers in Robeson County every day. This is the most gratifying part of my job. I admire all of them for what they do and have come to learn that farmers are generally the most solid and most genuine people in any community.

Although I am well aware of what most of the farmers in the county are doing, I had not only an enjoyable but also a very educational experience last week when I visited William Leggett. William and his family own and operate Packhouse Farms, a fresh-market butter bean farm on the Old Whiteville Road in the Allenton community.

I knew that it was about time for butter beans to be ready for harvest. I intended to just check with William to see how his crop had faired during the late, cool spring and the recent hot, dry weather.

When I arrived at the farm, I found William, his son Brad, and his daughter Shannon at the barn getting all the equipment ready to start harvesting and processing this year's crop of butter beans. Within minutes after I arrived, I was in William's pickup truck headed to the butter bean field. Brad left a few minutes before we did and was waiting for us in the field before starting the butter bean harvester.

As we traveled down the farm road, winding between field after field of butter beans, William never stopped talking about how difficult this year's crops had been to grow. It amazed me as he described how he had shifted his planting practices to compensate for the late spring. He described in minute detail how he monitors the fertilization of his butter beans to make sure he achieves the highest yield and told about all the specialty products he uses at just the precise time to make the plants set blooms and fill pods. He even described how he could manage his fertilization program so certain fields of butter beans would be exactly right at the time his customers wanted to buy them.

When I looked across the fields, all I saw was butter beans. When William looked across the fields, he saw every little detail about what had happened to the plants since the time they emerged from the ground, what was happening at that specific time, and what would happen to the plants within the next few days. He seemed to know everything there was to know about a butter bean.

When we arrived at the field that was to be harvested, I climbed into the cab of the harvester with Brad. He put the machine into gear, and we began to creep down four rows of butter beans at about one mile per hour.

Brad showed me how he could change the speed of the machine, adjust air flows, and increase or decrease the speed of different parts of the harvester. He demonstrated how the harvester would strip the entire butter bean plant, blow most of the leaves and stalks to the side, and deposit the hulled butter beans in a huge hopper on the top of the harvester. When we came back to where we started, he dumped the entire load of butter beans in a large trailer.

We all drove back to the shelling shed with the trailer full of butter beans. Then, Brad demonstrated how the butter beans were automatically unloaded into a huge, tumbling wire cylinder to clean all the trash out of the beans. They then went automatically into another tumbling cylinder that shelled the beans, separating out the remaining trash and hulls. The beans dropped onto a conveyor and then went through four cleaning operations of shakers or blowers, and then fell onto a conveyor where Shannon picked out the few bad beans and remaining bits of trash.

Within two minutes of being dumped off the trailer, shelled beans were waiting in a plastic hopper to be bagged and sold. When Brad picked up the huge container full of shelled beans in order to bag them, this was the first time they had been touched by human hands.

Although the harvesting process was amazing, the most fascinating thing for me was that William had actually designed all of the equipment used for loading, unloading, cleaning, and shelling. He and Brad had built every bit of it by themselves. The accompanying picture does not show all of the equipment that is used for shelling butter beans, but it does provide a quick view of just how complex it is.

If you want to see a fascinating operation, you need to make plans to visit Packhouse Farms within the next four or five weeks, before the butter bean season is over. If you have any appreciation at all for engineering marvels, you will be amazed at what you will see. If you want to know anything at all about butter beans, just ask William. If you want some delicious, fresh butter beans, Shannon will sell you some while you are there.

E-mail address: Everett_Davis@ncsu.edu

Mailing Address:
P. O. Box 2280
Lumberton, NC 28359-2280

Phone: 910-671-3276
Fax: 910-671-6278

Date Created 7/08/05