Buried in beans

At the moment, I am buried in beans. Specifically, dry beans.

I prefer to grow bush beans as opposed to climbing beans, and this year I planted eight tires of Jacob’s cattle beans and five tires of calypso beans (both heirloom varieties, of course).

This year the Jacob’s cattle beans outdid themselves.

The day I chose to pick them was windy, with rain in the forecast. I decided it wasn’t such a bad task to pick a couple thousand rattling bean pods on a blustery day.

Rather than yank up the plants and then later remove the pods, this time I stripped the pods directly from the plants.

I got two bushel baskets of bean pods.

The Jacob’s cattle beans were so productive this year that I held aside one tire’s worth of beans to weigh the result.

From that one tire, I got almost 2.25 lbs. of beans, which is actually a decent amount for dry beans.

In theory, then, I should end up with about 18 lbs. of dry beans. We’ll see. Shelling is slow work, but it’s peaceful. I shell a few beans here and there between other tasks.

Here’s an interesting anomaly: a hole bored into a pod…

…resulting in a hollowed-out bean. Must have been one hungry bug.

Here are the calypso beans. There were not as fruitful this year as in years past.

Since I was late picking these beans, a couple of the pods had already popped…

…and spewed the beans on the dirt.

Fewer tires as well as less production resulted in just one-third of a basket of bean pods.

Most of these beans — both varieties — will end up in a ginormous post of end-of-the-world chili.