Mini Thresher Harvests Small Plots

Mini Thresher Harvests Small Plots CROPS Miscellaneous If you want to grow wheat just for family consumption all you need is a mini thresher like John Howe builds The compact unit threshes and winnows wheat and rye and does a great job on dry beans too You can harvest an acre of grain with a scythe in a couple hours and then thresh out up to 20 lbs of clean grain an hour with my thresher says Howe He says you simply hold a sheaf of grain by the stems and insert the grain heads into the hopper where the beaters thresh them Grain falls down a tube into a bucket while the chaff is blown out the end of the unit If any chaff remains in the grain you just run it through a second time says Howe He built a prototype about 25 years ago and then resurrected the idea a couple years ago as interest in local food production grew I ve tried it with all types of beans says Howe It chews the stems up and the beans come out so clean that they can go right in the pot Howe pulls the bean stalks when they are mature dries them on a tarp under a roof and runs them through the thresher when fully dry While the beans slow the thresher down by about 50 percent he still gets about 10 to 15 lbs of beans per hour Every two to three minutes you may have to scoop the trash out but you don t have to worry about picking pods off says Howe He is building and selling the 40-lb thresher/winnower unit for $585 including shipping That price doesn t include the 1/3-hp electric motor which he suggests buying locally A new motor runs about $50 he says It only draws about 150 watts You could also power it with solar cells He has a solar package which includes a 130/120-watt panel inverter battery box and 30-amp charge controller with LED indicators sells for $1 100 Howe would like to find someone to build and market the thresher/winnower He estimates that material costs would be under $100 if built in volume Each unit takes 2 to 3 hrs of labor I would give the design away to someone wanting to produce it he says It works well but I need others to play around with it Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Howe Engineering Co 298 McIntire Rd Waterford Maine 04088 ph 207 583-4800; howe@megalink net; www solarcarandtractor com

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