Blessings on the Vine

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
                                    


I don't have a place for a garden, but I try to help Dad with his as much as he will let me. He doesn't let me do much but I am usually able to help Mom and Dad put up the harvest from their garden. One summer, I was helping to work in the green beans from Dad's garden. He usually has all of the beans picked, and I have to admit that that does not make me unhappy. Dad puts wire fence panels up for the beans to grow on. That really makes it easier to pick, but it makes a long bean tunnel between the rows that you have to go into to pick the beans. Uncle Johnnie Nolen is the one who gave us the fence panel idea.

Until the first time I had picked beans growing up those fence panels, I had never had any real feeling of claustrophobia. Going into those bean tunnels to pick beans made me understand that feeling. What is bad about beans is that when they brush up against you, they grab onto you…..and they don’t wanna let go! Those bean vines in that green bean tunnel grabbing me reminded me of a book I had read called The Ruins. It was about vines that attacked people. I thought that that book was just about the silliest book that I had ever read. After going into the bean tunnel. I am sure that the author had written that book right after picking beans!

Now when I help Dad and Mom break beans to can, I can’t help but think about my family members and how the “lowly” green bean has played quite a role in the survival of my family over the years. I know that neither of my parents came from folks with money. They had little money, but they did have small farms, knowledge, enough money for seed, and a willingness to do hard work. I suppose that a few may not have been so willing to do hard work, but in order to survive, there was a necessity for hard work.

Today we have tillers and many other modern tools that make gardening, if not easy, at least easier. But some years back, folks prepared the soil, perhaps using only hand tools or if they were lucky, they may have had a mule and a mule-pulled plow. After preparing the ground, they would plant the seeds, often carefully saved from last year’s crop. Many folks made certain to plant those seeds in the right sign. Some of our family’s best gardeners gardened by the signs.

Those signs indicated when to plant each crop, when to harvest each crop, and even when to weed the garden. If you planted in the wrong sign, your beans would not come up consistently. If you dug up your taters in the wrong sign, you better eat them quickly because they just might be prone to rot!

Of course, after the plants grew, you had to tend your garden or it could be overcome by weeds. Those weeds could choke out your plants. So many an hour would be spent in the garden with a hoe. I imagine that nearly every row was a long row to hoe to a young child who was probably eager to wade in the creek and catch crawdads.

I imagine that many a prayer was said for those green beans. Prayers that the time for frost was past, prayers for rain, prayers for sunshine, prayers that the harvest would be bountiful. Growing those beans was not just a pastime for our past family members. Those green beans may have been one of the only things to fill bellies come winter.

After the beans came in, they would have to be picked. In the summer, a mess of fresh green beans could be cooked up for a delicious dinner, perhaps accompanied by fresh fried corn or corn on the cob, homegrown juicy tomatoes, green onions, and a pan of hot cornbread! I’m makin’ myself hungry!

Of course, before they could be cooked, the beans had to be strung and broken. I bet that in the past, aside from eating the green beans, stringing and breaking would probably be the favorite chore involved with raising beans. At least folks could sit outside under the shade of a tree or a porch roof. Those folks could at least get off of their feet for a while and sit, even if they still had to be busy while sitting. They could sit with other family members and string and break those beans and converse with each other. Perhaps they had stories of the past they would share. Perhaps someone would start humming an old familiar tune and then perhaps another would join in with the words.

I have heard my parents speak of family members sitting together breaking beans many, many times. Some folks have even developed their own style of breaking beans. My husband loves to eat green beans that Aunt Lola has canned. They are broken between every bean and my husband calls them elegant! Aunt Lola says that her Mamaw had the kids break the beans that way years ago and she still breaks them that way to this day.

Breaking beans with Mom and Dad reminds me of sitting out on the porch with many family members over the years and breaking beans to be cooked or canned. I remember as a child feeling like a big shot when I was given a needle threaded with a long string that had a bean tied on the end. I would stick that needle through the whole strung beans and push them to the bottom until I had a necklace of green beans strung on that string. When my string was full, I would be given another threaded needle with a green bean stop on the end and then I would make another necklace. Gma Smith would take those strings up into the attic where it was hot and dry. She would hang them over nails in the rafters. After they were completely dry, she would pull them off of the strings and put them into clean linen bags to store. Come winter, when the garden was gone, she could take some of those dried beans and make a mess of shuckie beans, or some folks call them leather britches. They tasted different from fresh green beans, but they were delicious in a different way.

                            Uncles stringing and breaking beans.

                           Public Domain; beans strung up to dry.

               Public Domain; dried shuck beans or leather britches.

Every time that I sit in the TV room breaking beans with Mom and Dad, I can’t help but think about all of the other family members who have been doing that same thing from the distant past to the present. I can just see past family members sitting outside, a blessed breeze lifting strands of hair from sweaty brows. I can hear the low hum of voices, punctuated occasionally by laughter. I can feel a sense of relaxed contentment and relief that, at least temporarily, they could sit in the shade for a spell and relax, even though their hands were still busy. 

That respite would be short-lived. As soon as the beans were worked, they would have to be canned. Wood would have to be gathered for a fire under the tub where the jars would be placed. That fire would have to be tended for the hours it would take to process the cans. The heat from that fire would only add to already difficult temperatures. Yes, I imagine that stringing and breaking those beans in the shade of a grandmother tree was the favorite chore in the process of raising and preserving beans!

Those green beans that our past family members canned and dried were a blessing to them. On a cold winter’s day, a mess of those beans along with fried taters and cornbread filled their tummies in a delicious way.

Today, Mom and Dad can their beans in a pressure cooker inside the house. The house will not heat up too bad because central air will keep the house at a near-constant temperature. It will only take a few minutes in the pressure cooker to do what it took hours in the old metal tub to do years ago. We will be able to eat those green beans this winter, next winter, whenever and they will be as tasty as though they just came from the garden!

This is how we can green beans:

            After the beans are picked, we string and break the beans.

After the beans have been strung and broken, we rinse them about three times, or more if very dirty, to make sure that any dirt or debris has been removed. 

The rinsed beans are drained and then put into clean jars. They are gently packed into the jar to just below the neck of the jar. A teaspoon of non-iodized canning salt is placed on top of the beans in the jar.

Boiling water is poured to cover the beans in the jar. A flatware knife is run around the edge of the jar. This helps to release air caught between the beans. 

The top of the jar is wiped and a disc that has been in a pan of hot water is placed on top of the jar. A ring is then tightened onto the jar. The jars were placed into the pressure cooker and processed for 25 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.

After the pressure from the pressure cooker has been released. The jars are carefully removed and placed onto a towel on the counter and covered by another towel to cool. As the jars cool, you will hear the "pop" of the jars sealing. Those pops are music to the ears!

This year we ran out of jars, rings and discs for canning and we could not find anymore anywhere before we ran out of green beans. I talked Dad into drying some beans for shuck beans. I was kind of wanting to use a needle and thread like I remember doing when I helped Grandma as a child, but Dad wanted to dry them on his drying screens. So after stringing the beans, we went ahead and broke them. 

After we had them all broken, we took the beans out and spread them over the drying screen and left the beans out in the sunshine. We were careful to bring then in if the weather was rainy and at night to keep them from getting wet.

We kept putting them out and bringing them in at night until they were completely dry. This took about four or five days of bright sunshine. Wet weather would slow the drying time. When they are completely dry, they make a rattling sound when you shake them. After we thought they were dry, we put them into a burlap bag and hung them inside for a few days to continue drying, just in case.

Here, my less than enthusiastic son is demonstrating how the beans sound when they are completely dry. Dad has a theory that they are called shuck beans because they sound like when his mom was fluffing the corn shuck ticks that were under their feather beds on their bedsteads. Makes sense to me!

After the beans are completely dry, we put them into freezer bags and put them into the freezer to enjoy later. That is just an extra precaution we take in case our beans weren't completely dry. Our ancestors did not have this option, but they also had much more practice at drying green beans than we do!

So, next time you are eatin’ green beans, think of how those “lowly” green beans were such a huge blessing to our families in the past. Think about how sitting and breaking those beans and later eating those beans is a long-standing family tradition. Let that tradition remind you of how our families of the past were very much like our families of the present in so many ways. Think of those things and thank God for the “lowly” green bean that has provided sustenance in the past, continues to provide sustenance today, and will continue to provide sustenance in the future!