Bean stomping

It is almost mid-December. The winter solstice is eight days away, the date that signifies the first day of winter and the return of light. Snow is falling sporadically, and deep freezes have turned our ground hard. Still, our garden keeps giving in amazing ways.

For the past four weeks, I have trekked out to the remnants of the summer garden two or three times a week to break off kale, collard, and brussels sprouts leaves from their stalks. I also have snapped baby-sized brussels sprouts off their stalks. I use the words "break" and "snap" literally. The leaves and the sprouts are frozen, but they are still green. We let them sit in our mudroom for a few hours, rinse them well with cold water, and cook them quickly with a little bit of oil, leek, garlic, and cumin. They taste almost better than they did at the height of the season.

Herbs also are still valiantly alive. This afternoon, with the temperatures barely making it out of the teens, I snipped sprigs of thyme for a crockpot stew. I also have been continuing to harvest basil, lemongrass, rosemary, oregano, and marjoram from pots that we wisely stored this year in the mudroom -- which is less well heated than the main part of the house -- instead of indoors. The cooler air and the absence of hot air filtering up from a wood-burning stove or forced air heating vents seems to be suiting most of the herbs well. As long as we can remember to mist them every two or three days, gardening guides tell us the plants will make it into the spring.

And then there's the dried beans.

We ended our season with a joyful outcome on beans. After losing nearly all of our crop in 2012 to deer, we vowed to do a better job this year of protecting them and invested in a solar powered electric fence. The fence surrounded most of our garden and was considerably cheaper and less physically intrusive than any other barrier. I worried about deer getting hurt from the shocks of the fence, but they seemed not to be bothered in the least. The fence prompted them to alter their paths and gave us a wonderfully rich supply of winter beans.

Most of which remain in the two large cardboard boxes we stashed them in after harvesting the dry vines in October.

I had visualized quiet winter nights by the fire, listening to music, sipping tea, and shelling beans. That image worked well until I realized how slow the process of bean shelling is. Three or four times, I've sat by the fire for one or two hours shelling away. The end result is usually a few healthy cups of brilliantly colored legumes, a huge pile of brittle pods, aching shoulders and chapped fingers, and minute debris from leaves, splintering vines and other yard material scattered everywhere.

In the meantime, the load of beans that remains to be shelled seems to have barely diminished, to the point that my husband Jim remarked tonight that there was no way I would get through the beans before next year.

I decided there had to be a better way, and consulted the Internet.

Happily, there is.

A couple of colleagues once shared with me a practice of laying the bean pods on a sheet, donning clean socks and stomping all over them, crushing the beans n the process. Apparently, bean stomping is a time honored tradition with gardening enthusiasts, homesteaders, and small farmers offering suggestions. One from Mother Earth News that dated back to 1983 involved putting the beans in a burlap sack, tying the end, and placing the sack in an area of a house that sees a lot of foot traffic. After a few days, the pods are crushed and the beans are "de-podded". Once the beans are freed from their pods, the author noted, one only needs to give the burlap sack a few good vigorous shakes. The beans settle down on the bottom and you scoop the chaff from the top.

Other suggestions included putting the bean pods in a trash can and weed-whacking them until the pods were crushed, then using a leaf blower to disperse the chaff; donning work gloves and crushing the pods one by one, allowing the beans to fall into a container; and putting the pods in a pillowcase and beating them with a stick.

To be fair, I did try a modified version of the pillowcase method about a month ago. I loaded an armful of beans into a pillowcase that happened to zip close, put it on the floor and walked all over it. It did work, but I found separating the beans from the chaff to be quite laborious. Looking over these suggestions, I realize that shaking the  pillowcase and then finding some sort of way to dump out the crushed pods and other debris without losing the beans might have helped.

So, empowered by the tradition of bean stomping, I am hoping tomorrow to create a modified version of my colleagues' sheet method. I'll load beans up not in a pillowcase but in a chicken feed sack. The sacks we receive our feed from are made more of a vinyl material than burlap, but they are tough and should be able to withstand some rough handling. Plus, we buy 100 pounds of feed at a time so I'm figuring that we can fit the rest of our harvest into one or two of the bags. I'll tie the ends, take the bags upstairs out of our cats way, and stomp away. Perhaps I'll dance on the bags a little as well. Afterwards, I'll give the bags a shake (or get my much stronger husband to do so), and prepare to scoop out a big pile of debris … all good compost material that so minute and dry that it will take little to turn it into new soil. And, then, we'll see what lies below.