The Wisdom of the Radish

by Lynda Browning

  Chapter 6:

  BAGS AND BAGS

  Beans

  At the Healdsburg farmers’ market, three large wicker baskets brimmed with beans. They were arranged in stripes of color: one basket filled with green Kentucky Wonders; one basket half green with Blue Lakes and half purple with Royal Burgundies; the third basket strikingly split between dark Dow Purple Pod pole beans and lustrous yellow wax beans.

  The baskets were overfull, heaped high. The beans within them were uniformly young and tender, of a smaller size than those offered by other market stands. No doubt about it: I was starting to assume an air of legitimacy. It was looking like I might be able to do more than kill things—maybe, just maybe, I could grow them, too.

  I was beaming over my bean bounty when a tourist couple stopped by.

  “Would you look at that!” a big-haired lady exclaimed, tugging on her husband’s Hawaiian shirtsleeves (which tourists tend to sport in California despite the fact that they’ve stopped a few thousand nautical miles shy of Oahu). “I’ve never seen beans like those before.” She stepped up to the baskets and fixed her eyes on me. “What do they taste like?”

  “You can try one, if you like them raw,” I replied. It was the purple that she was talking about: I plucked a small, tender, plum-colored bean pod from the basket and held it out to her. When a twist of her lip suggested that she wasn’t partial to uncooked beans, I shrugged and bit into it. “They’re similar to green beans in flavor, although many of our customers agree they’re a bit sweeter than the greens.”

  “Wouldn’t that look just lovely in a salad,” she said, glancing around for a plastic bag.

  With that, it was time for my standard honesty-is-thebest-policy caveat. “Just so you know, the purple beans gradually turn green as you cook them. Not the same color as a regular green bean—more of a blue-green. But depending on how long you cook them, you can end up with a purple-green tie-dyed effect that’s quite nice.”

  “Interesting,” she said, with an undertone of only in California. “Are they all the same price?”

  “Four dollars a pound, mix and match.”

  The customer selected a quarter pound of Dow Purple Pod pole beans, a quarter pound of yellow wax beans, and a few Kentucky Wonders. She grabbed two bunches of Swiss chard, handed me five dollars, and continued on her way.

  My tourist customer rated about average on the excitement scale. Many shoppers were familiar only with grocery store green beans; our bright display of yellow, purple, and two different varieties of green beans hooked them. Curious, they’d ask questions about flavor, texture, and length of cooking (purple beans are slightly sweeter; yellow wax, slightly more tender; and the different bean varieties cook at similar rates). If these moderately excited customers occupied the upper end of the income spectrum, they wouldn’t hesitate to throw together a big bag of all the different varieties—and grab some summer squash, salad mix, and French Breakfast radishes while they were at it. If their budgets were a bit tighter, they’d spring for a small sampler—a little of this and a little of that—and one of our cheaper items, like Swiss chard. Either way, they probably wouldn’t have stopped at our stand at all if they hadn’t been drawn in by the beans—so the beans not only sold themselves, they also sold whatever other produce these customers happened to pick up. I’m not afraid to admit it: I was a Royal Burgundy bean pimp, using these lookers to hook customers, reel them in, and redirect them to slightly less exotic varieties.

  Then there were the customers whose admiration of beans surpassed even my own. Often, these folks’ parents or grandparents once trellised purple beans in the backyard. They’d never been able to find those beans in grocery stores; my offerings brought them the bright taste of memory, a sense of heritage, the opposite of loss. One visit from these customers was enough to rekindle anybody’s agrarian idealism—I was able to feel as though I was part of something greater than this small farmers’ market, some return to a pre-prepackaging Golden Age.

  We transformed from the bug-munched salad stall into a legitimate farm stand at the Healdsburg farmers’ market.

  Finally, there were the “beans are beans” customers. These constituted my least favorite group. They didn’t particularly care what type of beans I was growing or how I grew them. They were unimpressed by the small size of the beans, harvested when young and tender. The one thing that they cared about was the fact that my beans cost four dollars per pound.

  It was one thing if these customers were quiet, but a vocal “beans are beans” customer could ruin my entire day. The week before in Windsor—a more meat-and-potatoes town than Healdsburg, and consequently a tougher sell at the market—a man walked up to the stand, admired my beans, and then asked me the price.

  When I told him, he scowled. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Four dollars a pound for beans?” He spat the word out with disdain.

  I paused, unsure how to respond. Then I remembered. “At Whole Foods, they’re selling purple beans for five dollars per pound.”

  “Well, I don’t shop at Whole Foods,” he snapped back, and his sneering remark was so full of retribution it bordered on hateful. He stalked off, and I didn’t have the heart to respond. (Although I did spend the rest of the market thinking up my best comeback: “If you’re making minimum wage at your job, sir, you’re doing better than me.”)

  Are beans just beans? First of all, I take issue with the concept of “just beans.” Rhetorically speaking, our society doesn’t hold the bean in particularly high regard. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the third definition of beans as “a very small amount or nothing at all,” while Merriam-Webster states the second definition simply as “a valueless item.” Beans pop up in various clichés, too. Those who make beans for a living make little. In English and Australian usage, to “not have a bean” is to be broke. In France, fin des haricots (literally “the end of the beans”) is an apocalyptic phrase my mother would summarize as “up shit creek without a paddle.” If even the beans have run out, good luck to you, sir.

  Common parlance subconsciously pits the customer against four-dollar-per-pound beans. And it’s the gastronomic history of the bean that has produced this linguistic bias: beans were, and still are, peasant protein. Those who can afford to dine on meat, do. Those who can’t, eat beans.

  The bean-eating societal distinction dates back to feudal Europe. The landed class possessed the ability to graze herds of cattle and sheep, or to hunt game on horseback. Those without land were forced to eat more economically, obtaining protein from sources that required a fraction of the growing space. In a time when class distinctions were stark and cruel, beans became indelibly associated with poverty: the stigma of the “poor man’s meat” was born. Even today, legumes remain a staple of impoverished people, overpopulated regions, or areas with scant grazing land.

  In fact, beans are still at the forefront of international class differences. America is the land of hamburgers. The U.K. is the land of roast (or corned) beef, France of filet mignon, New Zealand of lamb, Australia of outback steaks, Germany of sausage. In developed nations, the dish du jour is usually meat. But throughout much of the third world—particularly in Asia and South America—meals often center around some variety of bean. (The black and pinto beans of South America are, at the species level, taxonomically identical to the heritage beans I grow.) As developing nations narrow the gap between the third world and the first, economists note that they typically undergo a “meat revolution.” In other words, as soon as the residents of developing nations have access to disposable income, their diets shift abruptly away from beans and grains. That first bite into a thick, juicy steak offers not just gustatory pleasure, but also the sense of having arrived: in the twenty-first century, the ability to consume meat still represents a giant leap up the social ladder.

  But despite the peasant stereotype, beans harbor a certain nobility. If you strip away the pall of history and examine the bean through a biological lens, you’ll find that its unique abi
lities demand a gardener’s reverence. From the moment it emerges from the soil, the bean is in a class all its own.

  Well, to be taxonomically correct, the bean is actually in a family all its own. Fabaceae, the legume family, is unique in its ability to influence the planet’s crucial nitrogen cycle.

  All creatures—plant, animal, or otherwise—require nitrogen. Nitrogen compounds form the basis of proteins and nucleic acids, the very building blocks of life and reproduction. The air we breathe is 78 percent nitrogen, so you’d think we earthlings would have it pretty good. But that massive reservoir of gaseous N2 is inaccessible to the likes of you and me. We can uptake our nitrogen only from plants or from animals that have dined on plants. And plants, in order to process nitrogen, need it to be “fixed” first—that is, made into a bioavailable compound (one that contains either oxygen or hydrogen).

  Which is where legumes come in. As a legume grows, its roots are invaded by Rhizobium, a commonly occurring soil bacterium. Once established, Rhizobium multiplies like mad, forming bumpy nodules on the fibrous roots—a most welcome disease. The plant encourages Rhizobium by supplying it with energy and nutrients; Rhizobium responds in kind, bequeathing the plant with ammonium, a bioavailable form of nitrogen.j Thus, because they’ve got their own portable fertilizer, legumes have the handy-dandy ability to colonize nitrogen-poor soils. When the legume dies and decomposes, nitrogen is re-released into the soil—providing a friendlier sprouting environment for future plant inhabitants.

  Because of its special Rhizobium relationship, gardeners use members of the Fabacaea family as a winter cover crop, plowing them under in spring to add nitrogen to the soil. Or, if they’re rotating crops in succession, farmers will plant beans after a heavy feeder like corn because beans will produce amply even in nitrogen-depleted soil.

  And the legume is as beautiful as it is useful. The pole bean rears his little head—seed-noggin, leaf-ears—out of the crusty clay soil and instantly demands attention. This is a bold seedling, tall and sturdy, yet the youngster politely tucks his leaves down at night and raises them to greet each morning with a fine sun salutation. As he grows, he inscribes patterns against the blue sky, twining irregularly around whatever happens to be in his path, leaving loud cursive loops leading to the runner’s final serif.

  There’s something a bit dark about the legume, too—especially in the context of an entire row of beans. They clamber up each other, grappling desperately for light, using other things to support themselves rather than developing a strong enough stem on their own. But if it’s dark it’s also beautiful: the evolutionary efficiency, the speed of growth, the brilliance of the bean’s swaying dance that leads it to twine around objects. A marvelous adaptation—like the strangler fig, gorgeously sinister.

  And, like a peasant, the bean seedling needs no coddling. He’s tender, perhaps, but he’s born with an ability to function. If cucumber beetles attack his first two leaves, he has energy enough to put out two more—and another, and another, until the bugs can’t possibly keep up. By comparison, the tinier seeds of the plant world—onions, carrots—emerge more like marsupials. They’re so fragile that they must be pampered, endlessly weeded and watered. The bean? He’s grateful if you pull out the weeds, but he’ll outgrow them even if you don’t.

  Which is why “full of beans” is appropriate. The phrase originally referred to someone who, like a manly peasant worker, brims with energy. Of all the clichés, this one fits the plant best.

  At the moment, I was very full of beans. In fact, I was a little past full—and despite my proud smiles at the farmers’ market, back at the field my enthusiasm for the prolific legume was running on empty.

  As usual, I’d been the original enthusiast for the too-bigfor-our-britches endeavor. I insisted that we plant five different heirloom varieties of beans, urging at least one hundred row-feet of the crop. When we experienced a near-perfect germination rate, I airily dismissed the concept of thinning the seedlings. Each one was so valiant, so artistic—how could we possibly get rid of any?

  And so I was the only one to blame when the plants that started out so lithe and graceful rapidly grew into an insurmountable thicket.

  At first, I was a little bit proud of my bean jungle. It was magnificent, a peasant hedge fit for a king: ten feet tall, three feet deep, and practically impenetrable to light. Unfortunately it blocked the tomatoes’ afternoon sun. I reasoned that the loss of ripe tomatoes would be offset by a plenitude of beans. After all, beans and tomatoes sell for approximately the same price per pound—no harm done.

  That sort of reasoning predated the Great Bean Revelation.

  The revelation took place on a Friday, our first real bean harvest, at the time when miracles happen on farms—when the farmer stops hoeing, sowing, and weeding, and instead devotes his waking hours to reaping. Zucchini can’t be contained. Cherry tomatoes ripen at breakneck speed, the heirlooms are swelling and yellowing, crookneck squash form a snake’s nest, and if the Armenian cucumbers aren’t harvested every other day, there’s going to be hell to pay.

  And on this Friday, in the midst of a veritable harvest festival, Emmett and I turned our attention to the bean thicket. Eying our tall, dark nemesis, we each grabbed a bin and headed to the shady side of the row. The lush bean vines protected us from the sun—but the lush bean vines also hid the bean pods inside their green folds. Picking beans is an intimate endeavor and the plant seems to like the attention. Its furred leaves cling to clothing, leaving farmers festooned with green spades.

  An hour later, sticky with sweat, I stepped back to see what we’d accomplished. Between the two of us, we had managed to (mostly) harvest (a bit less than) one half of one row. There were three rows. We had harvested probably a thousand beans—which added up to a mere bin.

  At this point, I was sweaty, tired, and humbled by the bean. What a bounty of food, what a phenomenal ability to proliferate one’s offspring. For each bean pod we picked would, if we’d let them develop further, produce several bean seeds capable of creating new plants. If each plant produced one hundred pods (a conservative estimate), that would easily be five hundred potential progeny.

  The bean tendrils meandered as they reached for the sky.

  And so my awe came with a healthy dollop of fear.

  Here’s the thing: it takes one good tomato to add up to a pound. The harvesting effort required is at most thirty seconds to locate the tomato, snip it off, and place it in the box. In contrast, a person must pick close to one hundred beans to add up to one pound. Instead of thirty seconds of work, it’s more like ten minutes.

  And so I began to resent the beans. Especially for shading out the tomato plants. Emmett resented them because they gave him a rash. He lay in bed at night, scratching his hands, forearms, biceps, the back of his neck—resenting me because I hadn’t permitted the bean thinning, a move that would have diminished rash potential. And pretty soon, we both resented the fact that in order to stay on top of the beans, we had to harvest them for several hours every day. In August, which in Sonoma County means hundred-degree weather. While the cucumbers could, in a pinch, be kept at bay with a twice- or thrice-weekly harvest, the beans wouldn’t wait that long. I’d blink and suddenly my tender Dow Purple Pod pole beans would be grossly elongated and podded out, suitable only to shuck for soup beans.

  This was a conundrum we hadn’t anticipated back when we were killing hundreds of seedlings and wondering whether we had enough produce to take to market. Too much produce? The thought was absurd. But as economists and food system analysts love to say, there is no food shortage on this planet—there’s just a distribution problem. Globally, 4.3 pounds of food are produced for every man, woman, and child per day: more than enough to satisfy everyone.36

  Still, I assumed that the distribution problem took place elsewhere. It was global. America had too much, Africa too little. And if we were considering a national scale, surely the distribution gap took place in the massive, subsidized cornfields of the M
idwest—not on a tiny, two-acre Californian farm run by two novice farmers who only recently learned the proper way to plant a potato.

  And yet Foggy River Farm had become part of the economists’ scenario. It wasn’t just the beans, either—it was everything. Our little postage stamp was bursting at the seams. We couldn’t sell all the produce, let alone eat it.

  Our initial solution had been the local food pantry. They gladly accepted our cucumbers, beans, and summer squash, but drew the line at chard and kale. Not a popularity contest, mind you—although chard and kale would lose that handily—it was just that they didn’t have sufficient refrigerator capacity, so they only accepted produce that would be okay for twenty-four hours or so unrefrigerated. But the food pantry wasn’t open on the weekends, when it would be convenient to stop by on the way home from the farmers’ market. We had to deliver on Mondays, which were one of our busiest field days (since we’d spent our weekend at the farmers’ markets, mostly away from the field). And, all do-gooder, warm feelings aside, the stress of constantly harvesting and driving to the edge of town to give away the produce that we were trying to make a living from was starting to take its toll on us.

  In the beginning, I was as excited as the pastor who received our several pounds of heirloom beans at the Food Pantry every Monday. On weekday mornings, I’d pick the west side of the pole bean rows, marveling at the productivity of the different varieties: Kentucky Wonders, Blue Lakes, and Dow Purple Pod pole beans, the earliest and biggest producer of all. I’d crouch down to pluck the pods of the bush beans—yellow wax, pale and tender, Royal Burgundy, curved and dark. In the afternoons, Emmett and I would patrol the east side of the bean rows, hiding always from the onslaught of the sun.