“Why try to explain miracles to your children when you can have them plant a garden.” -Janet Kilburn Phillips
Last month, I posted about how our vegetable garden is a family affair for my son and his kids. They’ve grown up helping in the garden, planting and picking and even preserving the vegetables by helping with the canning and freezing. They will know how to grow their own food and keep those vegetables for the winter table when they spread their wings and have their own families and gardens.
I always help them when they are picking their green beans. They plant two rows of bunch beans every year. Sometimes they have added a half row, but the years they did that, by the time the two rows were picked, that half row that still needed to be picked looked five miles long.
Just as with any chore, having help and sharing the job makes it better. Picking bunch beans is not the easiest chore. You either have to lean over to ruffle through the bean plants and snatch the beans that are ready or you have to squat beside the plants. Sometimes if your back or legs get really tired, you’re ready to do some crawling. In this some time ago picture of my youngest granddaughter, she’s figured out that you can just sit down beside the row and pick a few. Some people take a bucket or a camp stool to pick, but so far my son, the kids, and I just do the leaning over and squatting down while occasionally standing up with a few groaning complaints. Plus, when it’s hot, the flies and sweat bees want to pester you.
That is the hard part of bean picking. But it’s also a time for talking. I hear about what is going on with the kids. They all love to read and sometimes we get to talking about our favorite books. One of us will insist that the others just have to read this or that book. My son and grandson at one time were deep into fantasy fiction – the kind where the writer builds worlds and inhabits those worlds with all sorts of creatures along with a few humans. That’s not my usual reading, but it was still fun to listen to them talk about these strange worlds that became real to them through an author’s words.
The kids will claim this or that book the best or sometimes the worst. One of my granddaughters is still upset with Louisa May Alcott for the way she had the sister die and Jo not end up with the one my granddaughter thought was the best guy in Little Women. I don’t remember wanting to rewrite the story when I read it as a young girl the way she does. She wasn’t happy with The Secret Garden either. She likes things to turn out in stories the way she imagines sometimes instead of the way the author has originally imagined. Who knows? Maybe someday she’ll write her own stories.
This summer when we were picking, the girls talked music and how this or that singer or this and that song was their favorite or their non-favorite. With how kids can pick and choose what songs they want to listen to on their phones instead of just tuning into a radio and hearing whatever the disc jockey happened to play the way I did when I was their age, they are much more knowledgeable about the songs they like.
When I was their age, the Beatles were turning the music world upside down. There were songs like “Wake Up, Little Suzy” by the Everly Brothers and “You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog” by Elvis Presley. The kids nowadays know about those older songs too since they can hunt them up for a retro play list if they want. Anyway, while we were picking beans, the kids talked songs and what they had on their play lists. One granddaughter had a play list of Disney songs. Another was into country music. My son chimed in with the bands he loved as a teen and college student. Me, I just listened and picked beans while enjoying hearing them talk about the music they loved and the concerts they have gone to or want to go to.
In this fast paced world with kids having so many things pulling them this way or that, it’s not so bad having a couple of hours picking beans to do some garden talking about the things they think are fun. And at the end of the conversation, they have a couple of bushels of beans to take home to can and fill a few shelves with jars of beans. That’s worth a stiff back and a few bug bites.
“In every gardener is a child who loves to play in the dirt. In every child is a gardener ready to grow.” ― Anonymous
Have you ever picked a row of beans?
Comments 18
Yes, yes, I’ve picked rows of beans. What precious memories! Have a blessed week! 🙂
Author
Glad you have good memories about picking beans, Melissa. I have some good memories like those I share here, but I can remember times when it wasn’t all that pleasant with the sun beating down, the bean leaves making my arms itchy and the sweatbees stinging me behind the knees when I crouched down to pick some beans.
Yes, I have picked a row of beans and then another row. Then you have to do something with them. Snip the ends off and string them if necessary. It’s a lot of work, but so is a bunch of peas. Then they are so good when cooked. Tomatoes, on the other hand, just pick off the vine and eat.
Author
I think you’ve got it right about tomatoes, Josephine. I’ve been putting some tomatoes in the feezer. Love using them in soup and other tomato dishes.
Sounds as if you are an experienced bean picker. 🙂
I’ve picked many a row of beans since I was child until currently and canned them afterwards. Thank you for sharing.
Author
Somehow I knew you would be an old hand at picking beans and canning them, Lucy. It’s a country girl thing.
Yes I picked beans, and helped my mom string, break, and can. She always had a lot of beans and they tasted so good in the winter.
Author
Beans are the easiest things to can for green vegetables in the wintertime, Connie. It’s mostly what I can these days, but I freeze other things like berries and tomatoes.
Oh yes I have. As a child I spent time in the garden with my Grandmother, who was my best friend! We talked and laughed and ate (especially fresh tomatoes and strawberries right on the spot). My Grandmother always carried a salt shaker in her apron pocket as we picked. It was a special time with her that I will never forget.
I married and moved to a 100 year old farm house (our first house) where both my children were born. We planted a garden with green beans, tomatoes, corn, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, broccoli and some years cantaloupe and watermelon. We also had apple trees.
I canned close to 150 quarts of beans over a season, tomato juice, stewed tomatoes, canned tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, salsa, applesauce and apple butter. The day I went into labor with my son, I had pulled all of the beans plants out of the ground and had bags and bags of beans to can. Needless to say, I went home and canned beans the day I returned from the hospital.
My children helped in the garden when they were young.
I miss those times when I look back and wish my Grandmother had lived to do the same with my children. They would have loved her!
Author
Thank you so much for sharing your garden memories, Pamela. I love that your grandmother kept that salt shaker in her apron pocket when she went to the garden. That gives me a great picture of the two of you enjoying some tomatoes or cucumbers. I’ve been snacking on the salad tomatoes when I’ve been in the garden this year.
There’s just something extra fulfilling about having all those jars of canned food for your family on shelves waiting to be needed. A lot of work, but good to have.
I’m glad you have such good memories of picking garden with your grandmother. I wonder what my grandkids will think when they get older and I’m no longer around to pick beans.
We had a surplus of beans last year and I still have quite a few bags frozen for this winter, so we didn’t plant any this year, but I admit to doing the sitting down right beside the rows to pick like your granddaughter did. It is much easier on the back as long as you don’t mind a little dirt on your bottom! 🙂 Those bugs can be annoying best though while you are picking them, and I think I prefer the cleaning and freezing of the beans to the picking of them. I recently found a bag of beans that got lost in the bottom of the freezer from 2019. It had a little bit of built-up ice on it, so I rinsed them off and steamed them and they actually still tasted fresh and thankfully didn’t kill us~ ha-ha!
Author
I don’t mind the dirt, but guess the scooting along doesn’t sound like fun to me, Hope. LOL. I haven’t tried freezing beans for years. Didn’t like them the first times I tried them. So, I just can ours. Sounds as though you know how to make them good though. As long as stuff is frozen, you’re safe. They just lose some of their taste, I guess. I have some berries that I need to pull out of the freezer to make jam. Can’t eat that many pies. 🙂
Since we don’t have enough land to plant a row of beans, I have never picked a row of beans. I did try to plant beans one year, but I had to plant them in a pot on the patio and train them up strings to the eaves. By the way, we live in a one-story house in the suburbs. While we harvested some beans, there were never many ready at the same time, so I cut them up and put them in with other veggies as I cooked them. Our summer in Houston, TX, is so hot that the tomatoes, which were producing well up through June, have dried up now. We have a minimum number of peppers now, but the okra is abundant. About once a week I fix breaded/fried okra in the air fryer. They are delicious!
Author
Sounds as though you manage to have some garden vegetables without a big garden, Suzanne. We’ve never grown okra, but my mother-in-law did. I only like it breaded where you can’t tell the okra is there. LOL. Hot weather does make it hard on gardens. One year here it was so hot early on that the tomato blooms didn’t make tomatoes at all. A good garden depends on good weather and some rain.
After canning 90 quarts this year, my neighbor decided she had enough and gave me her last picking of beans.So I have a few beens preserved .
Growing up I did a lot of bean picking, and breaking.
I didn’t even like green beans as a child ,but my best friend and I decided as long as we had to put in the work ,we would try to like them. I love them now!
Author
That was lucky for you, Lisa. You got some beans without the planting. My son’s family has canned over 100 quarts and have stopped picking their beans too except for getting a mess out of them now and again. I have a row of pole beans I’m picking for canning. So far have canned 35 quarts, but will have more. We don’t plant as long a row as we used to, but we should have several more pickings.
Green beans aren’t my favorite, but the people are church love it when I bring them to church dinners.
Yes I have picked many of rows of beans and your garden produce is beautiful There is nothing better then a fresh mess of green beans with new red potatoes in then and big chunk of corn bread and slice of tomatoes I love canning green beans! Have a Blessed week!
Author
You’re making me hungry with those beans and potatoes and cornbread talk. I love cornbread with most anything but it is especially good with fresh garden produce. I haven’t raised potatoes for quite a few years. The potato bugs took up residence in my garden and ate up my potato plants as soon as they came through the ground. I gave up on getting rid of them.