Saturday, October 2, 2010

Beans !

I woke up this morning and felt a little pang of guilt, and a slight bit of panic about all of the little things I have left undone in my life lately. Weeds are engulfing certain crops on the farm, squash that needs curing, serious logistics to be worked out about the wrap up of the season (and yes mom...phone parents!). Part time farming/full time student-ing does have its drawbacks....

Blog posting would be one of those little things that has fallen a bit by the wayside and for that we apologize. Despite not writing much lately, there has still been some exciting developments at Skeeter Farm. We have some serious pumpkin growth/ripening happening, lovely little ears of popcorn forming, and my newest most favorite crop - dry beans - are hanging up in the hoop house to dry. 

A little preview of 2 of the varieties we grew (Candy and Orca)...and clean hands (i.e. very little farm work accomplished lately)

For those unfamiliar, dry beans would be those that you soak and cook before eating, such as black beans, navy beans, kidney beans etc. We planted 5 varieties of dry beans this year, which we procured from Salt Spring Seeds, as a small experiment. The idea with dry beans is that you grow them just as you would a regular bush bean plant, but instead of harvesting the pods when they are green, you let them dry on the plant and then remove the bean seeds from the pod. 

Due to the wet weather in September I made the call to pull all of the plants out and let them finish drying upside down in the hoop house (to try to avoid rotting). Hopefully in a few weeks I will be able to give a little update on our dry bean experiment (and perhaps the results of a taste test) and let you know if we will have some for purchase this year. I have yet to decide whether or not to save all the seed from this year to expand the crop for next season, or to try to sell some of them to test out market prices. Whether they are available this year or next year, the idea of providing a more local protein source and further increasing the diversity of our products is exciting. 

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