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Soybeans

M

Mike M

Well-known Member
The other day I got to thinking. I know a dangerous thing to do ! LOL

I don't remember seeing any Amish grow any soybeans.
Was the soybean just a fairly new invention about the time combines were invented to harvest them ? Or was there an old time method to harvest them ?
 
Dad said they came from the south, originally they started as a forage crop, to bale and feed like alfalfa.

Once the oil was figured out and processing built up, they came on strong in just a couple years.

In dads day, 1/2 the farm was grass hay, to feed the cows a d provide fuel for the horsepower. Rest was a little corn for the hogs and chickens, some wheat, oats, and flax.

How things changed in 100 years.

I produce 4-5 times as many bushels of crop as dad did on the same land from 40 years ago, and dad did about the same to his dad because of the drainage and hybreds available to dad.

Paul
 
I know some Amish in Middlebury IN. They all are Dairymen. They make hay, baleage and ensilage. Unlike corn that can be put in cribs, dried and ground for feed.... Soybeans need processing to become feed.
 
Dad use to talk about raising soybeans back in the twenties and thirties. Some were baled like hay and some was cut for silage. He said they grew to six feet tall.
 
In my area, NE Indiana, the amish raise a lot of soybeans. They have other guys come in and cut them and sell to the elevator.
 
I had a amish neighbor raise them a few years ago. He cut them with a binder when they were still green and let them dry out like oats and then ran them through a thrash machine. I think he had a lot of loss and I know he had a lot of shattered beans. He has not raised them now for a few years.

Bob
 
One thing I remember, my dad said that right after WW II you could pay for farmland in ONE year with a good crop of soybeans. Wish he was still around so I could ask how they harvested them, that was the early days of combines.
 
In 1944 my dad had a few he made hay out of . Rare to see a soybean anyplace. No combine harvesting them that I can remember.

By 195l they were everywhere and combines were harvesting them in Minn.
 
Early 50s like 54 or so I rode the rear of a small IH combine and sacked the beans for my grandfather. Folks came for miles around because that was the first soybeans in the area.
 
Amish around here cut them with a binder early in the morning with the dew on. Then they load them up like oats and pitch them thru a threshing machine. Most of them then burn the straw pile.
 
What part of northeast indiana? There is a big amount of Amish from Geneva to Monroe Area that I work with. Then there are the couple of sects farther up in the state. Most in the Berne area (centered in the Geneva to Monroe area) do not have enough acreage to raise soybeans but the few that do have a combine come in to harvest. Same thing is happening for Oats and the few that have enough acreage for wheat are doing and then having the straw as well as their hay baled in small squares. And there were bean huller machines that were simular to a threshing machine or clover huller but made for beans, the threshing machine speeds on the cylinder are too fast for beans thus the machine designed for beans. There were very few of them though but you would find more of them in the edible bean area.
 
That farmland must have been pretty cheap as soybeans didnt yeild much in those days and werent very hi-priced so it must have been very cheap land. South of you here in Iowa they would yeild around 20 bu considered a good yr.
 
I've had soybeans grow to 5' tall. Not this year. 2010 was the last time I've seen them that tall. Thick, too. Couldn't walk through them.
 
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