Holy cow, I only planted one 50-foot row of Provider green snap beans this year during a very hot and dry spring. I figured maybe I’d get enough to can up one batch after son, Bill and his family, had picked half a row ahead of a rainstorm, a couple weeks ago. So far, I’ve canned up 33 pints and have another 11 in the canner right now, plus what will amount to another 12 or so pints still left on the vines. And I threw away all the big, fat beans that would be tougher. My goodness, how impressive to say the least!
I cut up my beans on the front porch so I can enjoy the breeze and listen to the birds sing while working. It’s such a nice place to work. And it keeps the mess out of my kitchen too. Win, win!
Will’s been busy haying and has two more fields all baled up. But today, while I was headed out the driveway, I met him coming in with the baler when I thought he was baling another field. Oh oh! Yep, he was broken down with a bearing out of the pickup reel. It was a nasty job, but he managed to get the worn bearing out and, luckily, he had a spare. We often order double or even triple when needing a part, just for that reason.
I’m trying to get ahead with the rapidly maturing green beans so I can get to picking the rapidly maturing chokecherries we have next to the chicken yard. But I feel like I’ll never get them all done!! Of course, I do know I will. But holy cow, that’s a lot of beans! Thank you, God. — Jackie
We didn’t plant green beans this year because the space in the hoop house could be used more profitably with beets and carrots. We used to slice bigger beans in narrow bits and pickle them as beanerschnizel. I remember with all the kids home on the farm in the Catskills of N.Y. having done 40 quarts plus pickles and ending up selling a bushel or so at the local store!
Yep, you need to grow what you use most. What a neat way to use up those bigger beans! I love beanerschnizel.
I’m so sad and jealous! I lost all my Provider bean plants. I lost half of my Carminat but am getting a handful off what is still surviving. My Fremont Culture beans look fantastic and have been blooming like crazy all summer, but there is not 1 bean on any of them! Only part of my Lima beans have set. Such a hot and dry summer, everything is suffering. I’ll be looking for beans at the farmers market now.
Oh gee, I’m so sorry you lost your Providers! I imagine your Fremonts dropped their blooms instead of setting beans as beans will, due to the heat. Sometimes my pole beans will set early beans down low, none in the middle and then lots in the fall, when it finally cools down. It’s definitely been a tough gardening year.
Sitting on the front porch to snap beans reminds me of doing just that with my great grandmother one sweet summer day in my childhood. That experience and spending time with her daughter on her farm inspired me to want the country life. I’m grateful to have that dream now and thankful to you for continuing to inspire us all.
You do that in so many ways, like mentioning buying extra when ordering parts. It brought to mind an article in Backwoods Home many years ago called the rule of three.
Three ways to store water, cook, defend oneself, etc. in case one thing alone didn’t work, or failed as in the case of the bearing.
Thank you for sharing so many little details to help us along our journeys.
You’re very welcome, Carolyn! We try to always have a plan B, along with plan C with the most important things to keep us going, no matter what. For instance, both Will and I enjoy the comforts of having solar electricity. But we also both have lived without ANY electricity and can get along without it well. (I even still have 55# of candle wax and wicks plus canned fat of various sorts, just in case.) The just in case will probably never happen, but it costs nothing to have sitting down there on the shelf. If we can help folks on their journey, we are so humbled to do so.
Still hot and dry here, cooler and (please God) rain forecasted for later this week. For some reason, probably geography of the area, rains seem to skip around us and go north & south. Because of the ‘D’s drought, disease & drift the garden is almost gone even with watering. But we did get some of the Provider beans earlier and they were good! The Santa Maria tomatoes had a small crop, but what we got tastes wonderful! Gotta have hope!
Yes, you always need that hope to cling to! We’re in the same boat with the weather. We live just north of the Iron Range of Minnesota, which is sort of like Moses diving the Red Sea. Storms come up to it, part, and go north and south of us regularly. Good for severe weather; not so hot for needed rains.
Hang in there, do the best you can and pray for a better season next year.
Just a bit of information on that chokecherry harvest. We have them in abundance here in Central Kansas. Same as in North Dakota growing up years ago I pick when they are totally ripe and pick thru like usual to clean, then rinse to wash off Kansas dust. Use my big jelly kettle to boil. Then change up my Old process. Now I drain off the cooking water/juice into big spare kettle. NOW use your hand potato masher and really work them over. Lots of mashing and stirring. NOW add little cooking water/juice to mashed berries, swirl around and pour thru Large hole
Colander into another kettle. Do that rinse and strain until you have all pits in colander. Use that original water/juice to best advantage.
Now you have juice and purée for your jelly recipe. Except now it’s richer and thicker always better. More work but uses the whole fruit and Not Every year is a good chokecherry year.
I’ve found a good way for me. I was given a Mehu Liisa steam juicer by friends at one of our seminars at the homestead. I use that to extract the juice and get 5x as much juice from the chokecherries as I did, using the jelly bag method. If I have time and not many chokecherries, I’ll put the extracted chokecherries in a big colander and mash them, then pour the juice over them, squishing the meat through the colander’s holes. This gives me more of a jam than jelly, in texture, much like yours does. I love it!
My garden has been funny this year. My dry beans (tiger eye, Mexican and black beans) have been very productive as usual. However, my pole beans are just coming on. I think the extreme heat caused bloom drop and therefore no really round of beans. I just spied some little babies coming on, so hoping to get a good late crop🙏🤞
Yep, you’re so right! The heat causes bean flowers to drop. As pole beans are more exposed to the sunlight than bush beans, their flowers drop more frequently. Hopefully, as the weather has cooled, you’ll get a great, although late, crop.
I plant my beans after harvesting peas around July 4th-2 twenty feet rows. I hope I’ll get a bumper crop too which we can in quarts. We’ll see if that happens (I like the Strike variety)-we’ve been getting nice intermittent rain. I always expect break downs when using any farm equipment. It seems that’s my normal. I have harvested half of our bulb onions which are drying in the shed on racks. The tomatoes are coming along. We’ll can a lot of tomatoes as they have “disappeared” from our canned up supply. I could harvest some potatoes but it is too hot to store them. Sitting on the porch listening to the birds beats the “news” any day.
I’ll bet you get a bumper crop of Strike. I like those too. Having intermittent rain sure helps the gardens but not so much the haying. Yep, break downs always happen when farming, usually at a time that it’s very inconvenient to happen. Wil’s back on the field today. Luckily, he found another bearing yesterday. Just to be sure, he ordered two more. If you don’t have to wait for parts it sure helps.
Our onions are okay but not near folding over yet. The tomatoes look great but only a few are ripening so far. I’ve got a lot to do before their main crop comes in. Thank God.
Oh your beans are just wonderful!! So straight! You are doing well with all of your canning!
We’re really happy with our beans this year. I was going to pick chokecherries today but think I’ll wait till tomorrow as I’m pooped from doing green beans yesterday. I will pick a few more to put in the chicken pot pie we’re having for supper tonight though.
I sure hope I have the same situation with green beans as you! I planted pole beans for the first time this year (have always done bush beans due to my small residential garden). They were doing great but dropped all their flowes, assuming due to the excessive we had I. The Twin Cities. They’ve been flowering again the past couple weeks and now I’m starting to see a few grow. I have ten plants and they completely took over their area, exceeding the poles, and have since knocked over the corn that was also planted there and I can’t even see the squash beneath them anymore. I’m hopeful the green bean jungle I’ve created with be fruitful, the canning jars are begging for it :)
The adage of three is two, two is one, and one is none is often times true. It applies to not only to parts but food/non-perishables as well things such as sump pumps etc. The tricky part is are parts/supplies for what might be a throw away appliance/tool/equipment worth buying/storing. We’ll likely replace our frig once we use up the last filter (I will be retiring so looking to replace before it happens). We may not know when a breakdown will occur but we should have an idea of useful life/maintenance schedule. The money I had set aside for a new roof is now available for other use as a hail storm hit us. Part will be earmarked for our now higher deductible for wind/hail damage.
I agree with the throw away stuff you buy today. Gone are the days of a fridge lasting 40 years or a tool lasting for generations. They make them cheap, with cheap parts, meant to self-destruct so you have to buy new ones when they quit after a few years. Then they get rich and we get poorer. We try to have backup essentials like generators, equipment parts that often fail and, of course, food and seeds on hand at all times. Just in case.
Better half’s friends went cheap and bought a W/D from a big box. The pair lasted a whopping 3 years. Since we’re on the grid, the W/D we bought from a true appliance store lasted 18 years – the installer of the new set (old W had a plastic belt, go figure, which gave up the ghost during a spin cycle), was surprised the old W (not so much D) lasted that long. We spent our money on a upscale brand name set which can be repaired, again from a true appliance store.
So true anymore Cheap parts cheap made equipment with exorbitant prices. Your green beans are fabulous! The heat been so hard on the garden this year Received a welcome shower over night High humidity but nice to feel the rain.