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Heirloom Beans Bill Best "Do you have goose bean seeds?" "Are you familiar with the white fall bean from Harlan County?" "Did you know there is a richer lode of genetic diversity among beans in Appalachia than anywhere else in the world?" "Do you know ofthe greasy grit beans like my grandpa grew in Leslie County, Kentucky?" Bill Best is a faculty member at Berea College where he teaches physical education, creative writing, and mythology . For many years he was director ofBerea's well-known Upward Boundprogram. He is the author ofseveral books and numerous articles aboutAppalacian projects andprograms. Today, during the winter of 1998, one cannot open most seed catalogues without being bombarded by heirloom vegetables and even some seed catalogues are devoted to nothing but heirlooms. Chefs clamor for them and they are winning taste and texture tests whenever they're compared with the bland, tough, generic vegetables which have been bred for long shelf life and ability to withstand being shipped for thousands of miles by train or truck. It didn't take too many years of growing and selling vegetables at farmers' markets for me to realize that people in general were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with tough, tasteless tomatoes and beans. I have become increasingly caught up in the heirloom seed phenomenon myself(or perhaps I should say that the phenomenon has caught up with the wisdom ofmy motiier and others like her in the mountains who helped preserve the old seeds). When I was growing up in the mountains of North Carolina, my father practiced scientific farming whenever he could. He was the first in the community to grow the new hybrid field corns and one ofdie first to raise registered hogs—Poland Chinas, in his case. He influenced me to grow hybrid corn for a 4-H project when I was in the tenth grade. This led to my setting a North Carolina one-acre production record in 1951, and changed my life by sending me to die National 4-H Club Congress in Chicago. Daddy never got to finish the seventh grade; Mother completed high school. Daddy and Mother both were eager to learn about new things, but my mother also wanted to grow and preserve the old seeds, especially beans. I guess you could say she believed in preserving at least the best of the old. Mother listened intently to the home agents who visited in the community and she participated in their cooking, canning, and sewing demonstrations, but I suspect she taught them more than any of them taught her. Each summer I helped her pick the various cornfield beans for eating fresh, for canning, or drying into what we called "leather britches," and for saving as seed for the following year's crop. After being away from home a few years to attend college at Berea and graduate school at the University of Tennessee, I left to do active duty in the army. After my term of service was over, I taught a year in Knoxville, Tennessee. Then my wife and I moved to Berea where I have been an administrator and teacher at the college for the past thirtysix years. We quickly bought a farm, and I again started gardening. It wasn't a conscious decision—just what I thought I ought to be doing and a continuation of what I had done most of my life. I also thought that our children should be exposed to gardening as I had been. At first, following the path of least resistance while getting started, I fell into my father's ways of doing things. I ordered my seeds from the slickest seed catalogues and began making die Burpees of the world richer and happier and more dominant in gardening and agriculture in general. But every fall, when we would be visiting my family, Mother would give me seed beans which she had saved from that summer and remind me that I ought to be growing them. She didn't say why, but simply said that I ought to keep growing them. Gradually I started growing her beans again, and today grow nothing but the heirlooms. Now, thirty years later, it...

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