The Bean Harvest

Last year I discovered the joy of Good Mother Stallard beans.  I bought a packet of seeds and grew one 15' long trellis.  They did nothing all summer, then at the end of August they started going nuts.  It turns out they're a cool weather bean that won't set beans in the heat.  When the nights begin to cool down the beans finally start to set.  You let them grow and mature to full, lumpy pods, and continue to let them hang there until they become dry and crispy.  At that point you pick 'em, shell 'em and store 'em.

So at the end of last year I had a good quart of pretty red and white beans.  I picked out a big handful of large beans for seed stock for this year, and the rest went into soup over the winter.  Those beans made the most incredible soup ever.  The flavor was superb to the point of being irresistible.  I resolved to increase my yield this year so I could have more of that incredible soup.

I planted a 10' row of beans in a row with the spring peas (which were still producing).  By the time the peas were done the beans were just climbing the strings and getting started.  I also planted a 30' row of Mammoth Russian sunflowers and put three or four bean seeds around each one.  The sunflowers went to 8' and when the heads matured I cut them off to dry to feed the chickens as a winter treat.  The beans went up the sunflower stalks and eventually outgrew them, leaving a huge mass of foliage at the top of the insufficient, dying stalks.

I tried to prop the whole thing up with some ropes, but the stalks became too weak and fell apart.  I had to resort to throwing the vines over the rope trellis I had laid out in hopes that some of the beans would mature.  Ultimately I cut the bean vines off at ground level and carried the whole tangled mass to the open shed for drying.  My long suffering wife and I picked the beans off those tangled vines and set the bean pods in the basement to dry some more.  After a week or two in the basement, with a little help from a cozy fire in the wood stove, the beans were dry enough to shell.  We spent two or three romantic evenings settin' and shellin' together.  It's amazing that marriage counselors don't recommend this as a means to a healthy marriage.

So our hard work is finally done.  Now we have a bowl of about 6 quarts of the prettiest beans you've ever seen.  Even taking out another big handful of seed stock for next year, we should have enough for plenty of tasty soup recipes for a chilly Pittsburgh winter.

 The beans on the left were also dried and shelled, but there's only a few cups of them, and I don't even know what they're called or if they're any good.  That's a story for another time.

Dropping a large tree

In our annual quest for 4 cords of wood we do manage to drop a lot of trees.  I never top them or do anything fancy - I look for standing trees that I can turn into lying trees for easy cutting.  Today's adventure started like most others - badly.  I normally throw a line into the tree so it can be "helped" to the ground and guided in the direction that I would like it to fall.  Today the tree went straight up for 20 feet then forked with a narrow crotch that made a challenge of throwing anything through it.

After 10 or 15 minutes I managed to get my rope and branch thrown through the crotch (the branch is about a  foot long, with the rope tied in the middle - you throw it through, give it a pull and it (ideally) wedges crosswise and you can pull against it easily).  After I got the rope through I made my cuts.  The first cuts remove a large shallow wedge from the direction you want the tree to fall.

 Next is a plunge cut that leaves a hinge right behind the wedge:

The side view shows (starting at the left) the shallow wedge, hinge, plunge cut that goes all of the way through and a ligament that holds the tree steady.  The problem with the traditional wedge/backcut is that the tree becomes increasingly unstable until it falls.  The beauty of this method is that you can get to this point and have a safe tree condition.  Then you make one quick cut through the ligament and the tree comes down right where you expect it to.

At least that's the way it should work.  Today I tensioned the rope, made the last cut and the tree didn't move.  I went and pulled some more on the rope and the tree didn't move, but my rope and anchor branch did; they came right out of the crotch and fell into a pile on the ground where they were doing absolutely nothing about helping to bring my tree down.  I spent 20 minutes trying to throw my rope through again, broke a rope with a come-along (10 minutes), threw a smaller piece of rope with a weight on it through the crotch (10 minutes), pulled a larger rope up, secured it to the tree with a running bowline, and pulled the tree over with the help of a very entertained neighbor (thanks Tim).

Another hour of cutting (while Patty gave the splitter another workout) and the tree was reduced to nicely burnable chunks.  A few loads were brought up and stacked in the woodshed today, and tomorrow we'll bring in the rest and be ready for another cold Pittsburgh winter.

"Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice."   Indeed.