Threshing and Cleaning at Ayers Creek

On Friday April 2nd, Laura, Kellee and myself had the chance to make a trip out to Ayers Creek farm in Gaston with all of our dry beans and the remaining bits of our popping corn. Anthony and Carol Boutard own and run Ayers Creek farm where they supply a bounty of local beans, grains, corn and a plethora of other produce to the Oregon food markets. We made the trip not only to see first hand a wonderful and innovative farm operation but also to use their fun bean threshing and corn shelling machines! This was quite the experience in fun and efficient farm tools. The bean thresher can easily separate two 40 pound bags of dry beans in about 10 minutes which might take all of us a full days worth of work by hand. After using the thresher the beans were then poured into a cleaner which, with a series of differently sized and shaped plates pulsing in opposite directions, further removed unwanted debris and irregular beans. At the very end of the assembly line we traded out hand sorting the beans one more time to ensure the beautiful crops you will all be receiving in your shares.   

After the beans were all threshed and cleaned we used a hand cranked corn sheller(pictured above) which was mounted on a containment surface to shell the popping corn from the cobs. Though we got to use a bit more muscle with this machine, the efficiency and ease with which it worked was most incredible. To learn more about the machines we used and growing grains, dry beans and corn in the oregon area you should check out Anthony’s blog.

I hope you all enjoy the beautiful beans and corn in your share!