 Can you believe that our field has lost almost all
the leaves and the pods are all brown? In the past two weeks our
field has gone from a few yellow leaves to no leaves. That's
amazing! It won't be long and we will be harvesting this field. I'm
looking forward to that.
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 Plants
in our row are drying down and the pods are all brown. The plants
appear to be ready for harvest, don't they? Well, looks are
deceiving and I'll tell you why in a minute.
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 Here's
our first plant. It appears to be about like it was earlier in the
week. I believe the stems and pods have dried more since Monday, so
they appear browner. We've had some daytime temperature approaching
80 F and that has helped the plants dry faster.
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 This
is the base of our first plant (You can see the plastic twist-tie
that we used to keep track of our plants.) What do you see? Well,
lots of pods of course, but what about the stem? There's still a
green color in the stem. This means it hasn't completely
dried. So, it isn't really time to harvest yet. I think we
will be able to harvest next week, especially if it stays warm over
the weekend.
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 This
is our second plant and it appears to be ready for harvest, too.
Actually, this plant appears to be a little drier than the first
plant, but it needs to dry some more. I need to count the number of
pods each plant has before the combine harvests the field. (A
combine is a machine that cuts the plants and separates the seeds
from the pods. You will see one very soon.)
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 The seeds continue to dry. I bit a seed to see how dry
it was. The seed cracked apart easier than it did on Monday when it
smashed apart. This tells me the seed moisture is still a little too
high to harvest, but much lower now, probably about 18% moisture. It
won't be long now.
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