A Good Bean is Hard to Find

The lowly bean gets pricey in times of drought.

   
If you lived in a farmer’s shoes this week you’d find yourself on the cell calling your farmer pals on their cell and saying just one word: Beans?

    In response there is a chuckle and usually a request that if you do find some that you will swear to share your source. My own bean vines are in a sad state. Oh the plants look nice enough and there are lots of blossoms but the pods are rubbery and empty as the creek these days. This is how I found myself driving fifty miles to a produce auction four counties away in search of beans. Let me be the first to break it to you, there is nary a Tenderette in all of Central Kentucky right now.

    At this point, it doesn’t matter to a farmer what kind of bean it is. Most any would attract and please a customer the last week of August. It could be your everyday Contender, though preferably what you want front and center in a bushel basket is the local’s bean of choice, the White Half Runner. The Half Runner is a favorite garden bean of the Southern Appalachians and you’ll find a pot of them simmering — for at least an hour, possibly two — on the stoves of people born in Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virgina, and Kentucky. The bean starts out as a bush but then sprouts runners that you generally trellis on tobacco poles with baling twine for traditions sake. Its strings can be dicey to remove but there are people who would never think of buying another bean to save their soul. My mother cooked them long and hard with onion, bacon and small ‘pebbles’ of new potatoes for the final 40 minutes or so. Despite all that cooking the beans hold up and always manage to be highly tasty.

    Beyond the Half Runner there is the flat Roma bean, which to me is more versatile as you can combine it with tomatoes and dress it with good olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar, or the usual bacon and diced onion. Whether your influence is Tuscany or Tuscaloosa Romas remain the most flavorful pod of all. But there are no Romas in these here hills either.

    Heirloom Greasy Beans? Forget it. Bright yellow Wax Beans? You must be joking.

    Being a beggar, I would even stoop so low as to pay top dollar for a homely Goose Bean; about 10-inches long and an inch wide the ages old cornfield bean is secretly one of my favorites. This is all in preparation for the unheard of prices you will see on the beans I was able to ‘procure’ for the weekend market. Customers are free to whine of course, but rest assured we are only trying to break even and it doesn’t cover the fossil fuel expended on behalf of legumes.

    To illustrate how crazy some of us are about our beans, a bushel of Kentucky Half Runners in our season of drought — keep in mind these are wholesale prices — went for a jaw-dropping $62.50 today, which is now the record at the auction. (Reminder to self: next year plant way more beans).

    There are much more reasonable prices on everything else we have. Our tent finally expired last week so please come see us inside the store on Thursday from 3 to 7pm and Saturday from 9 am until 3 pm (or until sold out). We have large amounts of late-summer favorites and a few fall items. Also, we got a bumper crop of tomatoes from the garden yesterday so come and enjoy these sun-kissed beauties while they last. We also have a fragrant garden of melons from which to choose this week including several varieties of honey dew, lovely golden globes, and some unusual cantaloupes to enjoy over the holiday weekend.

    If all goes well we’ll have prepared food items to sell starting next week and be fully operational by the Fall Festival. Speaking of which, the Midway Fall Festival (Sept. 15-16) will have a special farmer’s market this year in our parking lot and so far we have at least six vendors who are coming, including a corn roaster, a farmer who cooks her vegetables and serves them up at the stand, Bluegrass Meadows Beef, a certified organic nursery, and vendors selling fall vegetables, gourds, mums, ornamental corn and pumpkins. We’ll also have some wonderful apples and pears, baked goods like Jamieson’s fudge brownies, and preserves and salsa. Hope you can make it!