At an excavation site in Kentucky, beans found in an old American Indian dump site were dated to 1,000 years old. These were cut-short beans, one of the dominant types grown by farmers in the Southern Appalachians. These families descend from former supporters of King George III who found themselves on the wrong side after the Revolutionary War. They could either return to Britain or move west into the Appalachian region to start over, where nobody knew their history. There they adopted the beans grown by local American Indians, which became the genesis of strains still cultivated by these same families today.
Beans are the primary subject of a most amazing garden book (Ohio University Press) that is the ideal blend of human culture and horticulture. Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste by Bill Best focuses on farmers in the hills and hollows of Appalachia who saved their seed for centuries. In this simple paperback I've learned more about beans and their evolution at the hands of American farmers than anything else I've read over the past 35 years.
What really caught my attention was the most important way contemporary beans differ from these older Appalachian strains grown in isolation at each remote family farm. Best explains that these varieties are so renowned for their flavor that frugal locals will pay significantly more for them at the farmers market. There's another difference too: The pods are much more tender. Old timers know just when the pod quality of bean seed changed in the early 20th century. Agricultural science sought a tougher pod string bean so plants could be mechanically harvested. These Appalachian varieties are still so fragile each must be carefully harvested by hand.
This book also notes the way they grew these beans in the old days. Inspired by American Indians' Three Sisters idea of planting corn, beans and squash in the same field, these colonial farmers grew the beans in cornfields. Bean plants are legumes able to fix atmospheric nitrogen into the soil, thereby fertilizing the corn all season long as their roots shared the same ground. The corn they cultivated were strains for livestock fodder or grinding into cornmeal, a staple of their regional cornbread cuisine. This corn produced much stronger stalks than modern strains, again because breeders weakened them to better suit mechanized harvesters.
Best describes himself as a collector of bean seeds that go by such amazing names as Goose Craw, said to have been discovered in the throat of a freshly killed bird. Greasy beans are a coveted group, with Lazy Wife having the most delicate pods. This bean collecting was inherited from his mother, an avid gardener and bean grower. After her death, the freezer at the old homestead held 13 varieties of previously unknown bean strains. Best explains that beans circulated among farmers within communities, who traded their bean seed at family reunions and church suppers.
Best's varieties and those discovered by active collector Frank Barnett are available from the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center Inc. at heirlooms.org. Explore Barnett's photo gallery, too. These are truly rare strains that may prove the solution to growing in challenging climates because they contain very different genetics from our contemporary varieties. Within these Appalachian strains lies our undiluted agricultural heritage.
Once you order your first packets of seeds, keep the varieties separated so they won't cross pollinate. The book explains how to save your bean seed at season's end to grow in next year's garden, just like the old farmers did. These will all come true to the original variety.
With knowledge shared in Best's book and the results of his collecting available at the online store, every one of us can enter the secret world of mountain bean growing.
Maureen Gilmer is an author, horticulturist and landscape designer. Learn more at MoPlants.com.
HomeStyle on 03/14/2015