The Great Bean Reduction

 

We made a mid-week trip down to our garden to harvest some flowers, odds and ends and start on some of the dry shell beans. Unfortunately, our entire family caught Covid for the second time this pandemic. Fortunately, we only had mild cold like symptoms so it seemed like a good time to isolate in our garden. As you can see, we had quite a few dry shell beans that we picked which ended up being about three rows out of I think somewhere around 10 that we planted.

Back home in our isolation, we were real party animals and shelled those beans over the next several days. Planting had been a little fast and hectic and so we didn't know exactly what we were picking and indeed, one row on the end had been planted half and half which made for fun sorting as you were going along.

After a couple days of further drying in the sun on every cookie sheet we had available on our back deck, I deemed them dry enough to store in glass jars. Because at the moment I have a plethora of pint glass jars and a custom made pint canning jar rack down in our basement, that is where we chose to put them. Out of all those dry shell beans, I filled up 13 pints or just over 2 gallons of dry beans. Later when I go to actually can them so they are cooked and ready to go, something I only do as needed, each pint will probably make three or four pints of beans ready to heat and serve.

We have five pints of Bird Egg beans.

Seven pints of Tiger Eye beans.

One pint of Appaloosa beans.

And Calypso five beans that somehow got into our bucket from another row. I'm guessing the pod was laying on the ground in the middle of a row, was found and picked up. They are sure pretty beans and I can't wait to see a jar full of them when we pick more rows in the upcoming weeks.

As you read this, we are all cured of Covid and back to normal again. I'm glad to now be immune for the time being and can't wait for the just approved new vaccine to cover the BA4 and BA5 variants to be stocked locally. But if we do get it a third time, I'll have plenty of beans to eat during our isolation.