Denise Spencer

I’m helping my daughter build a food forest in her suburban backyard, so I’m particularly interested in Permaculture Guilds Training Session and Helen Atthowe’s Backyard Food Forest webinar recording, but all the offerings look very informative!

Mark Reed wrote:

Ha, I just last evening, found some of Carol's Beefy Resilient that I had forgotten I had. It's a mix up of all the colors, definitely gonna put them in the ground this year! Especially since you say they too have the semi-runner habit.  

You will love them.  Beefy Resilient is my favorite bean. I love the rich flavor. Also, They are pretty prolific even in my garden which only receives about four hours of direct sunlight daily.
Each bean seed comes true to color, so you can create your own self segregated mix if you prefer one color over the other.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:I highly recommend Lofthouse Dry Bush Bean, which can be purchased from Experimental Farm Network.

An inexpensive way to get a lot of bean seed, is to plant 15 bean soup mix that the grocery stores sell.

What a beautiful photo of those glorious beans!

Thanks for letting us know where the Lofthouse Bean is being sold. I purchased it from you several years ago and still plant it out every year.

Also, I thought I had read that you used beans from the soup mix in your landrace, but I couldn't find the info to quote you. 😀

I am a huge fan of Carol Deppe's Beefy Resilient Bean Grex which has a meaty rich flavor and makes a great substitute for black beans. The mix contains small black, brown, golden, and sometimes white seeds. It is a bush type bean and is available from Resilient Seed.
Dry Bush Bean- Beefy Resilient

If you like red beans I had great success with Hidatsa Red from https://www.prairieroadorganic.co/collections/beans-peas
They also carry Nodak Pinto. "Incredibly early and productive, this bean is easy to grow. Nodak has a vine type growth habit and is resistant to bean rusts present in North Dakota."

I have two other suggestions for bean sources
1. Cheapest option: Buy a bag of each bean your interested in from your grocery store and plant those out.
2. More expense: Buy varieties from specialty bean sellers such as Ranch Gordo  https://www.ranchogordo.com/collections/heirloom-beans or
   North Bay Trading Co.   https://www.northbaytrading.com/beans-lentils/beans/  
   Both of these companies sell beans in 1 pound or greater packages for eating. You can try several varieties of non-commodity grown beans. Cook some up and see which you prefer.

Mark Trail wrote:I took some pinto beans out of a storage jar several years after purchase and presoaked, changed water and boiled for 8 hours. They were still crunchy and tough.

Mark,
I've had success cooking old beans in a pressure cooker. I generally presoak the beans and cook them under pressure 5 to 10 minutes. Stove top pressure cookers cook faster than an Instatpot.  With either method I let the pressure drop naturally.

Old beans are a bit more iffy timing wise. If the beans are still a tiny bit hard I finish them off on the stove top, but this is generally not an issue.

Your suggestion about grinding the beans into a flour is an excellent way to use old beans, because one can then use it anywhere pureed beans are used.

When I was growing up in a family of four children, we had assigned chores for each night of the week. These included setting the table, washing dishes and drying dishes. As we got older my mom had each of us learn to cook a dinner meal that we enjoyed eating. We were responsible for planning and cooking the entire meal for the whole family. Mom had a least one night a week off from cooking. As I got older (age 11) I started cooking most of the family meals, since I loved cooking!

Another thing we did occasionally was have breakfast for dinner. Waffles on Sunday night was always so fun. If Dad wasn’t home we’d have cereal for dinner.

Nowadays, I have what we call “free for all” Fridays. Everyone gets to make their own dinner (and clean up their mess as well.) Letting others share the burden of cooking from scratch helps prevent the burn-out.

Thank you Jennifer and Josiah for the helpful video on increasing a pledge on Kickstarter. I just did it and the process was very easy.
next time I'll just pledge the $100 from the very beginning. The stretch goal goodies get me every time!

How does one increase their pledge on Kickstarter?

Thanks!
Denise

Lif Strand wrote:I like this idea very much!  I'm wondering what you and others do to prevent gophers and other underground critters from coming in from the bottom and rabbits and other above-ground critters from coming in from the top?

Lif, we line the bottoms of our beds with hardware cloth. I find the holes in poultry fencing allow the gophers to get through.

I didn't see this mentioned, but if you have empty canning jars, you can store water in them until you are ready to use them for canning. A box of 12 quart jars equals 3 gallons of water, and doesn't take up any extra space.