WW1 Soldiers Picking Beans

Image from the album of Major Jack Lee Smith, East Riding Yeomanry. Smith was involved in the agricultural distribution centre at Beverley barracks. In 1917 he assigned 60 men to T. Fisher's farm in Cottingham to help with the harvest. In this image they are picking beans. Smith notes that the beans had grown too low on the stalk for the reaper to cut, so to save the harvest they had to be cut by hand.