From Goose Beans to Greasies

Monday, March 09, 2009 ... not doing anything at 7:00 p.m.?

Sign yourself up at the Clark County Public Library- (859) 744-5661 - to join Bill Best, of the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center in Berea. Dr. Best will be recounting the peculiar history and growing habits of one of Central Kentucky's historically favorite garden vegetables, the pole bean.

Dr. Best has collected more than 100 varieties of greasy bean alone, and hundreds more old-timey pole beans from the Southern Appalachians and Kentucky's seven regions. Many of these varieties were teetering on the volcanic brink of extinction, having dwindled from acres of that variety grown all over a county district fifty years in the past to a handful of carefully-guarded plants in a single elderly person's backyard garden plot.

Dr. Best has spent a good deal of his life seeking out these heirloom varieties, talking to the family members still growing them, collecting both beans and family stories, documenting the stories and growing out the seed to spread them to a wider audience of younger folks. The strings of these beans now weave gardeners together from all walks of life.

Before I met Dr. Best six years ago, I thought that there was only one kind of greasy bean, and that it was probably impossible to get hold of them any more. By that time, it had been over 20 years since my mother and I would buy greasies at local flea markets and roadside stands in Southeastern Kentucky.

For those of you who have not met the acquaintance of a "greasy bean", your life has been poorer. Greasies are so called because the outer pod of the bean lacks the botanical pubescence, or fuzziness, of a regular green pole bean. The greasy's pod is dark green and nearly slick, almost like a peapod. Greasies generally, but not always, yield a "cut-short" bean, a little bean that has the ends squared off because they grow so tightly packed in the pod.

A good greasy is usually a short-podded bean, and packed so full of seeds that each pod resembles the figure of a middle-aged man romantic enough to give his grown daughter's hand in marriage wearing the tuxedo that fit him at his own wedding thirty years ago. Greasies generally taste sweet and peanutty. Many varieties go so far as to taste a little smoky, even if you are cooking them up without the benefit of bacon.

Anyway, I hope I see you at the library on March 9th. Not only is attendance free --- but everyone gets a free packet of heirloom bean seed to take home, courtesy of Dr. Best. So come on down, and start dreaming about a big pot of snap beans served up with a side of homemade cornbread, fresh sliced tomatoes and a cool glass of iced sweet tea...