Harvesting the Beans

We have a lot of soy bean fields around our property and the other day they started harvesting the very day beans. I snapped a few shots and hope they didn't mind. The beans were planted in the spring and we have been watching them grow, bloom (very tiny blooms you can barely notice), the bean pods slowly went from flat to big with the beans. Finally over the last few months they have been drying on the now dead plants. Each bean is about the size of a pea. I can't call them vines like so many beans grow on as it seems to be more of a plant about two feet tall. The first photo is the big machine that would cut down the plants and inside the machine it pulled the soy beans out and put them in to a holding tank on the back of the machine and at the same time threw the plant and pods out the backend as you can see in the second photo.  Interesting.

 This is the truck that held all the soy beans after they had been harvested.

This is the machine from the first photos with an arm extended to send the soy beans from the holding tank to the truck. You can see the beans going into the truck.

This was out across the field from us. Highway 71 is behind the field. You can see part of a blue simi tracker and trailer tuck through the trees. The highway is that close to our house. I was standing on the steps to our back door to take this but had the camera zoomed in all the way.

This little hawk, or maybe a falcon, was sitting on our flagpole watching the harvest. We have seen several hawks lately. I think they know that the harvest will disturb all the rodents that live in the field and they will be able to see them and catch them easier now that the beans are gone. And so many people think that birds and other wildlife can't think and learn. This hawk knew what was happening.