Cutting organic weeds-I mean beans. With a binder.

Last summer our crop of organic spring beans where overcome by weeds. I was in favour of mowing it down and making it into whole crop silage to feed to my cattle. But my father saw it as the perfect opportunity to get the binder out & do a bit of bindering. After huge amounts of work the beans were thrashed later that summer and yielded 2 tons from 11 acres. I was right but I don't like to coo about it! The following footage is of old men with a nostalgic glaze in their eyes reminiscing about the 'good old days'.

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• Peakhill
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• farming.
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• holders.
• Suffolk
• Theberton
• Leiston
• Kelsale
• Food
• Bygone
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• Aldebur

[ajb07]

@modernblacksmith - (adapted from wikipedia) The reaper-binder was a farm implement used in harvesting. It improved upon the mechanical reaper, which merely cut standing crop such as wheat; it would also tie the stems into small bundles, or sheaves. In the case of cereal cropping, these sheaves were then 'shocked' into conical stooks of about 12 sheaves, to allow the grain to dry for several days before being threshed in a thrasher. Nowadays a combine harvester does the job in one go.

[ajb07]

I'm guessing this is a Massey-Harris binder? later model with power take-off? I've never really understood how these machines manage to tie a knot when binding the sheaves with twine, but after watching your vid I can appreciate the action a lot better. So thanks for posting and a nice bit of nostalgia :)

[modernblacksmith]

what is "bindering" supposed to do for you?