Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste: Heirloom Seed Savers in Appalachia

Beans

13 B Beans Beans occupy an almost mythical status not only in the Southern Appalachians but also in other bean-growing parts of the world. They have been found in Indian burial mounds and in pyramids. When kept in airtight jars, they have been found to be viable after hundreds and even thousands of years. Corn, of course, also occupies high status in many cultures, with corn and beans being the dominant foods. Together, and accompanied by pumpkins, they occupied a special status within many Indian tribes, who saw them as the Three Sisters, for their growth habits were symbiotic, with the cornstalks providing support for the beans; the beans providing nitrogen for the corn, winter squash, and pumpkins; and the squash and pumpkins providing ground cover to help control weeds. Heritage Fruit and Heirloom Seeds 14 Our Appalachian Beans Came from Where? There are many ongoing discussions about where the beans of the Southern Appalachians originated. The debate has intensiWed with the coming of the Internet and numerous gardening forums where people swap information, sometimes misinformation, and questions. Seed-saving organizations also have sessions at their annual meetings and informal get-togethers. I have come to believe that most of the beans found in the mountainous areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia, and Alabama can be traced to the Indians living in the area when Europeans Tyler Hess (left) and Brian Best (right) hand-planting bean seeds Beans 15 Wrst arrived from the Xat and coastal areas of what would become the United States of America. Given the bean’s tendency to cross and mutate, most of the varieties that now exist in the mountains could have come from a far smaller suite of original beans than one might think. At the annual meeting of the Kentucky Vegetable Grower’s Association in January 2005, the keynote speaker, Dr. Gwynn Henderson of the Kentucky Archeological Survey, gave a talk on the history and possible origins of many of the edible plants of the Southern Appalachians. During her presentation, she showed slides of beans taken from an Indian dump in Jessamine County, Kentucky, that had been discovered during a construction project. Carbon-dated at more than 1,000 years old, they were clearly cut-shorts, one of the dominant types of beans in the Southern Appalachians (called cut-shorts because the seeds are so crowded in the pods that they square oV on the ends). Beans from another site in Mason County, Kentucky, were more than 1,400 years old. Cut-short beans take the shapes of squares, rectangles, parallelograms , trapezoids, and even triangles. Because of the high ratio of seed to hull, they are much higher in protein than other beans are and could have been prized by the Indians for that reason alone. They were also valued by the European settlers; today, they are still treasured by traditional gardeners and, increasingly, by farmers’ market customers. Although the same beans have been in many mountain families for generations, determining where particular varieties originated is diYcult. But one may safely assume that where certain varieties predominate, that says something about their development , if not their origin. I was at a conference a few years ago, and during a discussion of traditional foods, someone mentioned a bean that had been in his family for generations; he still maintained that variety even Heritage Fruit and Heirloom Seeds 16 though he lived in a city far removed from the rural area where we were meeting (on property that had belonged to his greatgrandfather ). Others present entered the conversation with stories about beans that had been in their families for generations as well, and this led to a discussion about family beans being a part of Appalachian culture, perhaps more so than in other regions, or at least longer. Family Beans I know of one bean that can be traced back to before the American Revolution. One of my college classmates, Don Fox from Madison County, North Carolina, was calling one of our mutual friends a few years ago. Intending to dial the number of the friend, he mistakenly called me instead. I took the opportunity to discuss his family bean, which he had shared with me a few years before, Brian Best (left) and Tyler Hess (right) in bean patch Beans 17 brought to me by our mutual friend, Ben Culbertson. (This is one of...