Counting beans

The forecasted frost materialized. We woke up Tuesday morning to find our garden glistening in the sun. But a bright sun and clear skies soon warmed up the home, and after my husband Jim and I fueled ourselves with coffee and a warm breakfast, we headed out to the garden the survey the results.

There was virtually no damage. The basil plants did look limp and weak, which made me doubly glad that I cut them back the night before and that Jim -- unlike I, who crashed on the sofa around 11 p.m. -- was willing to stay up past midnight (after the salsa canning was complete) to turn the basil leaves into pesto. But by mid-morning tomatoes, beans, eggplants, and summer squash were still ripening on the vines, and the kale, collard greens, swiss chard, and baby bok choy that we've been eating for the past several nights did indeed seem crisper and sweeter as a result of the frost.

Another frost was expected that night so I decided that it was time to harvest the rest of our fresh beans. Some Internet research suggested that beans don't tolerate frosts well, and that whatever was still on the plants probably would be lost for the year. A quick survey and taste test, however, showed that the two kinds of fresh beans and the "shelling bean" that we had planted were still crisp and fresh. I decided to clip all the vines, and sort the beans into those that could be eaten fresh or frozen, and those that could be dried or salvaged for seeds for next year.
We had planted one seed packet of Provider green beans, Royal Burgundy purple beans, and a shelling bean known as Tongue of Fire. For the uninitiated, which included me until I recognized the Tongue of Fire pods as similar to the dry pods that I had picked up from local farmers last fall, shelling beans are a variety of bean with exceptionally large seeds. You can eat the seeds either fresh, semi-dry as "soup beans" or dry them for use in chilis or stews through the winter.)

It took me a good two hours to clip the bean vines, and I discovered in the process that the Tongue of Fire beans were still ripening on the vine. I clipped some but left many in the fields, figuring that the beans inside the pods would be just as good dry as they were fresh. The vines filled a large plastic bin as well as two laundry baskets and a wooden crate. It took me two additional stints stretched over two extra days to clip off the beans and bean pods from the vines, and sort them into categories of "eat or freeze" and "use as dry beans or seed". I was delighted to discover that the beans that still looked good enough to eat or freeze could fill one of the vegetable crisper bins in my refrigerator.

The abundance of beans feels like a lesson in life, delineating perhaps the hard-to-grasp difference between scarcity consciousness and abundance. I've been trying to understand which is which for several years, as I've struggled through times of feeling generous and feeling miserly, of trying to practice unconditional giving but ending up feeling somewhat used, and of trying to make sense of the discomfort I feel when an artist or writer tells me that I need to be supporting the arts by buying their work even if I don't really feel like buying (or feel like I can afford) their work. The dilemmas have put me in many awkward positions that I'm not sure I've been able to resolve, as yet.

The beans offer a way of understanding scarcity and abundance in different ways.

Last year, our fresh beans grew thick and fast on the vines. We couldn't eat them fast enough, or pick them in a way that would encourage the bean vines to produce even more. We also didn't understand that fresh beans don't always dry well, and we didn't think that we liked fresh beans enough to want to capture their flavor in freezer bags for use through the winter. Our sights were set on the drying beans that we also were growing -- the black turtle beans, the Vermont red cranberry beans, and the red kidney beans.

Just as those dry beans began to mature, deer discovered them. They stormed through the protective netting we had set up around them and munched to their hearts' content. Since we had not shown a whole lot of interest in the green Provider beans and purple Royal Burgundy beans that we also were growing, the deer devoured them, too. After the damage was done, I salvaged whatever I could. And, in the process I discovered that the Royal Burgundy beans that didn't seem to have a whole lot of flavor fresh off the vine improved markedly after being chilled in the refrigerator for a few days. I also discovered that they last in freezer bags and in refrigerator bins fresh for several weeks, and have almost as much plant-based protein content as their dry-bean compatriots.

I promised myself last fall that I would treat the fresh beans with the same respect I normally give drying beans.

Through the summer, we watched all of the bean plants carefully. As the harvest time neared, we picked and enjoyed beans fresh off the vine, and packaged a good number in freezer bags. The purple beans were planted a couple of weeks after the green beans, and were just on the peak of maturity when our early frost hit. Looking at them in our refrigerator bin makes me realize that even if we were to freeze enough beans for 50 meals for October through July, we still had more than we needed. As a result, I have something else I can share with the Franklin Center Community Center's food pantry and other organizations in need. Even as I am at times cash-poor, the abundance of beans makes me feel quite rich. Even as I look forward to harvesting our drying beans (and keep hoping that the solar fence we have installed around our gardens will continue to keep the deer happy munching on the apples and berries that proliferate the area), I also am relishing a winter of meals that include green and purple beans frozen fresh from our garden.

Bean counting gets a negative connotation. It signifies cheapness, a placement of value on quantity of a commodity, rather than a quality of life. But perhaps counting one's blessings through beans might change the equation somewhat, offering a first step in moving from scarcity to abundance.