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| Beans are back! |
While returning to the bean patch, a story comes to mind from earlier days. When we were first learning how to garden at the farm, it was often a surprise when something we planted actually grew! The farm was very primitive, with growing plots carved out of a wild area that had not been cultivated for decades. One of our origin stories is about the extension agent that we invited to the farm to advise us on best use of the land. He took one look at the tilted terrain, the copious rocks protruding from the soil, the masses of brambles and weeds dotting the proposed garden space, and he offered a single-word answer for the best land use: Recreation!
So of course we commenced to garden.
The first bean planting was rather ambitious and we were excited to see the many rows of emerging seedlings that eventually matured into little leafy bushes. And then one day we looked and realized: We've got beans! There was excitement and almost giddy laughter as we waded into our first big harvest - taking along a couple of farm visitors who didn't want to miss out on the apparent fun. We happily chatted as we started to pick. And pick. And pick. And as many of you know, the beans are not all evenly mature on each plant, so picking a large patch of beans means thousands of decisions - is this bean big enough? too big? too crooked to ever mature? It takes focus, as well as the ability to bend over for an extended time period.
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| Decisions |
It got quieter in the bean patch. The visitors peeled off, muttering, "That's enough of that!" And we learned our first lesson about market gardening. We weren't in a backyard garden anymore!
Fast forward a few decades. It's still quiet in the bean patch. But the crew, experienced in the ways of bean picking, comes with earbuds or headphones for a musical, podcast, or books-on-tape accompaniment to what they know will be a long stretch.
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| Sam with headphones, tuning in to Books on Tape to Pick Beans By (Watership Down) |
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| r. to l. - Sam in the "bean bend," Kenny in the "bean crouch," Cale in a "crouch-bend"! |
Those of us who are not wired for bean-picking spend our picking time ruminating on the meaning of beans in our society. More specifically, what is the origin of the idiom, "a hill of beans" as in the saying: "That doesn't amount to a hill of beans". Why has that come to depict something with little value? Why don't people think much of beans?
A Google search supplies this rather bland suggestion: “Hill of beans” is cited from 1853 and 1856. Beans were planted between corn; perhaps corn had a much better market value in the 1850s. Here is a better idea: Beans, being fairly easy to grow, are commonly used in everyday expressions to indicate something of little value. Consequently, someone who isn't worth a hill of beans is seen as being worth very little, although one could argue that today a hill of beans costs a pretty penny.
Since "a hill" in the US is 99 feet (before it becomes a mountain), that would definitely be a lot of beans! But why are beans so undervalued? They might be "fairly easy to grow", but they aren't fairly easy to pick! Our neighbor who picked beans on his uncle's farm tells us that in 1963-64 he was paid sixty cents for one of those old-fashioned hampers full of beans.
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| A dime plus a fifty cent piece for this bushel of beans! |
Well, times have changed and hopefully our crew (and our beans) do not feel undervalued! However, do you think it was mean that right after picking beans this week, we asked the crew to thin the next patch of beans! Yep, one more patch to go before frost takes the tender bean plants.
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| The crew thinning the plants in the next patch on, literally, a hill of beans! |
Although Freya looks like she is walking on the row of bean plants, she is an impeccably trained dog 😂 and, this time, is only walking on the extra plants that have been pulled and discarded for being too close together. Smart doggo!
And of course modern-day technological ingenuity has solved the "problem" of picking beans. In commercial bean fields, giant semi-sized tractors, tricked out with special bean harvesting attachments, crawl through thousands of acres, grinding all the bean plants in their path. A system of conveyor belts and blowers separates the beans from the leaves while dump trucks follow the harvesters to receive the massive load of beans. It is definitely not quiet in the bean field while these behemoths do their work. But 1-2 bushels of beans are harvested every minute! That's a lot of dimes and fifty cent pieces, but at what cost? At what cost?
Well, beans don't always carry negative connotations- an energetic person is "full of beans". And what of Jack's magic beans that allowed him to grow a beanstalk up to the sky? Those were pretty valuable beans! We hope you will appreciate the GREEN (and maybe yellow) BEANS that are definitely in your share!
We made a three bean salad this week - to stay away from the stove and to appreciate beans! We substituted blanched green beans for one of the the dry beans in the recipe. We used parsley but skipped the rosemary and celery. SWEET BANANA PEPPERS added some crunch, and they are also in your share. Soaking the chopped ONION was a helpful tip for taking the bite out of the onion. It was good!
We also made a sesame noodle salad (too hot to cook!). We did cook regular pasta for the base and then added the veggies we had available: grated CARROTS and lightly steamed SUMMER SQUASH slices. It's really all in the sauce, folks!
If it stays hot, we're going to look into POTATO salad And we know that ribboned and lightly massaged KALE happily go into any of these salads. GARLIC does, as well, and if you aren't saving your TOMATOES for tomato sandwiches, they would be a fine addition to the bean salad - as well as some of the THYME or OREGANO. We don't know which bunch you'll get, but these are friendly herbs that pair with many dishes, and can be easily dried for later use.
That's our best guess on the share this week; there may be some substitutions or surprises, but we do know that it all will amount to way more than a hill of beans!
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| Original art by Sheila Ruen, gifted to the farm over thirty years ago. |
Have a great week everyone!
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