More Beans!

I love shelling beans. There is nothing better than sitting on the back porch on a warm, sunny late summer day, listening to '80s New Wave on Pandora, and popping shiny dried beans from their dehydrated pods. It's something that makes me simply happy. Maybe it's because I love doing fiddly things with my hands. Maybe its just sitting still with something uncomplicated to do. I don't know and I guess it doesn't matter. I'll just take the quiet joy.

My legs didn't even go numb this year.

My not-so-attentive bean supervisor.

I planted rattlesnake beans and black turtle beans this year. They are two of my favorites. Both grew fairly well but the beans themselves are somewhat smaller this year. Perhaps it was the lack of regular rain. We only watered the garden a couple of times and the garden seemed to do fine on its own without further intervention.

Dried rattlesnake beans on the vine.

Turtle beans on the plant. (these ones don't really vine)

The rattlesnake bean pods have a curved shape and are tight around the beans. The pods split open fairly easily but the beans need to be removed individually. The black turtle beans have smoother, looser pods. They pop right open and the beans can be removed in one fell swoop per side. I like shelling the rattlesnake beans better but it's fun to have different tactile experiences with them.

Rattlesnakes

Turtles

I wrote a more in-depth post last July about my bean cultivation, etc. - Beans! - so there's no need to go into detail here. I just wanted to make a brief post about the joy I find in bean shelling. You should try it. You might like it.

All the beautiful beans!

 

Beans!

I’ve found that beans are one of the easiest things to grow in my little backyard garden. I didn’t plant any this year but, in the past, I have grown purple, yellow, and green beans to use fresh and frozen as well as rattlesnake and turtle beans for shelling. I tried lima beans and long Thai beans once each. I even experimented with garbanzos back when we were living on the mountain. The plants were beautiful, but they didn’t make a single bean.

My absolute favorite are climbing shell beans. I just love the entire process of planting them, training the vines to a homemade trellis, waiting for the pods to grow full then dry, and finally spending an afternoon on the porch shelling them.

New rattlesnake bean seedlings.

Training onto the trellis.

Bean blossoms.

Looking good!

Starting to dry out now.

Ready to shell.

Beans!

I’ve never planted enough for them to be a staple of our winter diet, but there are usually plenty for a few batches of baked beans or soups. I just used some of our dry beans collected a couple years ago for some good old fashion Boston baked beans.

From the jar...

...into the pot...

...and ready to serve.

Now I kinda feel bad that I didn’t plant any beans at all this year. Oh well. I’ll add them to my plans for next season.

And here's a bunny, just because.