Simple Life

This morning we finally remembered to shell some beans while we were having coffee. Most of you probably have never shelled dry beans. Now that I think about it, you probably won't either. That's too bad. This is a simple task that is satisfying for a bunch of reasons. The most obvious is you get to eat beans at some time in the future, but there are lots more.

We harvested about two bushel of bean pods from a row of beans about 40feet long. These are beans grown to be used as dry beans. They are doubly special to us because they were grown from seed we saved out of dried beans given to us by Virgil Wood. The beans were developed somewhere Downeast from Jacobs Cattle beans. They develop sooner and give better yeilds than regular Jacobs Cattle beans while maintaning all the same good eating qualities. The thing that is really most special though, is that Virgil gave them to us and he is very special to us indeed.

During the first summer we moved to Surry, Virg stopped in and introduced himself. We were working on the hay barn and it was late afternoon when he drove up on his four wheeler. It was hot and whatever we were doing, we were ready to quit so we invited Virgil to sit down in the shade. Virg is one of those people you just like to hear talk. He's in his seventies and has done enough different things to be interesting and he has some pretty good lines. We talked for a couple of hours like old friends. He kept tabs on us that summer and fall and brought vegetables from his garden occasionally which were greatly appreciated. Virgil goes north to Millinocket for the winter and just before he left, he brought a fifty pound bag of potatoes, a mess of buttercup sqhash and a huge bag of his dried beans-all shelled.

We were busy trying to get some kind of shelter up and Virgil could see we were up against time and the weather and was doing what he could to help. You don't run across people like Virgil often and when you do, you want to treasure them.

Shelling beans reminds us of Virgil, his kindness and how lucky we are to have his beans.