And the shelling begins

It's finally time to harvest our dry beans. For months, we've been walking through the bean garden, watching the plants sprout, shoot up, form flowers and pods. We've been fingering the green pods gently, willing them to turn dry and brittle -- the sign that the beans inside are mature and ready to eat. We've been watching the weather forecast for frosts, and we've been watching the ground for footprints, hoping that deer, which devoured our fledgling bean garden last year won't try and make a repeat performance.

And, finally, we decided this Saturday was the day.

The weather was perfect for harvesting beans: cool and crisp in the morning but hot and sunny in the afternoon, and dry enough that we didn't have to worry about traces of dew marring the pods. I came outside with a pair of scissors and a few salad-spinner size baskets. Quickly, as I lifted the drooping vines from the ground, I realized that I was going to need something bigger than baskets. These vines were drooping because they were so heavy with beans. My husband Jim cracked one pod open. We whooped with joy, as we saw six black turtle beans nestled inside. We had success!

Harvesting the beans has been a joyous and labor-intensive task, especially after my husband Jim decided he wanted to leave the plant roots in the ground so that they could continue to return nitrogen to the soil and hold down the topsoil we have worked so hard over three years to build. With the roots in the ground, the soil is more protected from erosion and windstorms than it would be otherwise.

But the work -- like so many other things -- is intense. We started yesterday afternoon, thinking that we'd be able to get about half the beans picked by sunset. We hadn't even cleared one row by sunset; the plants were that laden with beans. We resumed this afternoon, and got through perhaps a quarter of the field.

"At this rate," Jim said, "We might be done in a week."

"Well, you probably spent a week planting the beans," I replied with a laugh. "It seems only appropriate that you would spend the same amount of time harvesting them."

But harvest is more than just picking the pods. The pods ideally should be laid out on sheets or screens to dry out, before the shells are removed. Our pods are fairly dry so we have decided that we can shell them en masse once they're all picked, but shelling itself is quite a labor-intensive task. And after shelling comes sorting and sifting out the chaff.

And then the eating ... well, that takes time, too. Unlike the fresh beans that can be plucked off the vine, quickly rinsed, snapped, and steamed, boiled or stir fried for about 90 seconds before being ready to eat, eating dry beans also is an investment of time. They need to be soaked overnight, and will need to be cooked for anywhere from one to three hours afterwards. In other words, you can't just come home at 5 p.m. and say, "Oh, let's have black beans and rice, or chili tonight" and run to your jars of richly colored beans and have it all together within the hour.

Yet, this time-consuming stretch from farm to fork is one reason that our bean harvest excites me so much. Like many vegetables we now grow, I never cared all that much for beans until I started getting them fresh from local farmers. Growing them myself took freshness to an even higher level, and now as winter approaches, I see several nightly meals of black, red, white, purple, and speckled beans as a wonderful way to evoke summer and appreciate anew the value of home-grown food.

We ceased our work for the day in the bean garden at about 4 p.m. Jim went for a run, and I decided to visit the area where we had planted our summer crops, an area that we are now preparing to turn partially into space for our fall planting of garlic and partially lie fallow next year so the soil can rest and rebuild. The summer gardens are now mostly empty, but I brought out a basket anyway, thinking I would clip a little more stevia to dry and use as a sweetener and see if I could glean just a little more.

It turned out that there was quite a bit. Cherry tomato plants had dropped hundreds of firm, rich

red bite-sized fruits. Gathering them up felt like being a kid on an Easter egg hunt who had stumbled into the treasure trove. Two tiny eggplants hung resolutely onto their vines, and several small yellow summer squash were still poking their way out of the three sisters hills. I gathered these plants up, envisioning a last-of-summer stir fry to accompany a mushroom and wild rice pot pie I was planning for dinner. And, around the edges of the three sisters hills, were fresh green and purple beans growing, still growing and still as sweet and as tasty as ever. I snipped off a handful, and brought them indoors. Stir-fried with summer squash strips, tiny eggplant rounds, fresh tomato, and a little bit of olive oil and cumin, they tasted wonderful and crisp.

        After the meal, I picked up another basket and for an hour shelled dry beans. It seemed like an appropriate transition from one season to the next.