Beans, etc.

The beans are ripe, and they are a pain. If you didn’t pick beans yesterday, you’d better be picking them today. Actually, that’s not even enough—it should be every 36 hours. If you picked Monday night, you need to pick again Wednesday morning. Even then, there will be plenty of overripe ones that need to get tossed. And the overripes still need to get taken off the vine. If you don’t pick them, it will delay the maturation of the rest of the beans on that plant, just like cucumbers—you have to pick that giant yellow submarine, or the little bitty ones won’t develop.

And what are the beans worth? $2 a pound. A local restaurant is buying some, some are sold at the farmers’ market, some are for the freezer.

The kids, especially The Girl, have been pretty useful at bean picking. The Boy does it, but with more complaint and less thoroughness. Me, it’s mindless, but easy. Good time for thinking of blog entries.

The kids were also useful Saturday when I was freezing corn. I know that alone, my limit is about 70 ears—husk, blanch, cool, cut off cob, bag for freezer. (I'm envious that my sister gets to do it with her MIL and SIL. Obviously they can do a much bigger batch; the husbands also help.) 70 ears is about three hours work, including cleaning up afterwards, a non-trivial part of the process. While I cut up beans, the kids husked the corn and made that job so much easier for me. And even better, while they weren’t fast, they didn’t complain, and even asked when they could do it again.