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CHAPTER VI BEANS Planting Beans Bean planting followed immediately after squash planting. Beans were planted in hills the size and shape of squash hills, or about seven by fourteen inches; but if made in open ground the hills were not placed so far apart in the row. Squash hills, like corn hills, stood about four feet apart in the row, measuring from center to center; but bean hills might be placed two feet or less in the row. Beans, however, were very commonly planted not in open ground, but between our rows of corn; the hills were arranged as shown in diagram (figure 8, page 25). Corn hills, I have said, stood four feet, or a little less in the row, and the rows were about four feet apart,l when corn was planted by itself. But if beans were to be planted between, the corn rows were placed a little farther apart, to make room for the bean hills. Putting in the Seeds To make a hill for beans, I broke up and loosened the soil with my hoe, scraping away the dry top soil; the hill I then made of the soft, slightly moist under-soil. The hill, as suggested by the measurements, was rather elongated. I took beans, three in each hand, held in thumb and first two fingers, and buried them in a side of the hill, two inches deep, by a simultaneous thrust of each hand, as I stooped over; the two groups of seeds were six inches apart. I have heard that some families planted four seeds in each group, instead of three; but I always put in three seeds and think that the better way. Figure 24 will explain the two ways of planting. I am not sure that I know just why we planted beans always in the side of the hill; I have said we planted squash thus because the sprouted seeds were tender and the soil in the side of the hill did not bake hard after a rain. Also, we were careful not to make our bean hills too large, as the heavy rains turned the soft soil into mud which beat down over the vines, killing them. 1 Measuring from center of corn hill to center of next corn hilL-G. L. W. 82 Figure 21 Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird. BEANS 83 Hoeing and Cultivating These subjects I have sufficiently described, I think, when I told you how we hoed and cultivated corn. Threshing Threshing was in the fall, after the beans had ripened and the pods were dead and dried. Sometimes, when the weather had been favorable, the bean vines were quite dry and could be threshed the same day they were gathered. But if the weather was a little damp, or if, as was usually the case, the vines were still a little green, they had to be dried a day or two before they could be threshed. To prepare for this labor, I went out into the field and pulled up all the corn stalks in a space four or five yards in diameter; this was for a drying place. ~=-;:,,~­ I pulled up the vines of one bean hill ~ 00 and transferred them to my left hand, '-~ -~where I held them by the roots; I gather- -~~-=-.._ ed another bunch of bean vines in my right hand, as many as I could conveniently carry; and I took these vines, borne in my two hands, to the drying place, and laid them on the ground, roots up, spreading them out a little. I thus worked until I had pulled up all the vines that grew ncar the drying place. I made several such drying places, as the need required; and on them I put all the bean vines to dry. At the end of about three days, when the vines were dry I took out into the field half of an old tent cover and laid it on the ground in an open space made by clearing away the corn stalks. This tent cover, so laid, was to be my threshing floor. We never laid this tent cover at the edge of the field on the grass, because in threshing the vines, some of the beans would fly up and fall outside the tent cover, on the ground. We always picked these stray beans up carefully , after threshing. This could not be done if we threshed on the grass. My threshing floor ready, I took...

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