or frozen until time to plant them. The first lesson, of course, was to stay away from commercial beans entirely. Before Mother had refrigeration (which she got about the time I left for college), she had put mothballs or hot peppers in her bean containers; that kept the weevils at bay but also gave the beans a bad smell—and your hands, too, when planting them.
When I started selling heirloom beans at the Lexington Farmers Market in the early 1970s, I charged more per pound for them than did vendors selling commercial machine-harvested beans that they had purchased for resale. Not long afterward, I noticed something about the buying habits of many customers: they would buy several pounds of commercial, stringless beans from other vendors and then buy a pound or two of “full” beans from me.
When I finally asked why this was so, my customers told me that they were buying my beans “to flavor” the ones they had already bought. As I came to know more of my customers, I realized that most of the ones who bought my beans to flavor the others were migrants to Lexington from eastern Kentucky or mountain counties in other states. They liked the cheap prices of the commercial beans but also wanted taste and texture if possible. They also liked having a few “real” beans mixed in with the commercial beans, which consisted almost entirely of hulls.
As vendors selling commercial beans, usually bought from produce terminals, started raising their prices to have a higher profit margin and their prices became closer to those of heirloom beans, many, if not most, of the heirloom bean lovers started buying only heirloom beans when they were available. They decided that quality was worth the price, especially if there was little difference between the prices. As more eastern Kentucky transplants started coming to the market, many of them shared some of their family beans with the vendors who were interested in growing them for the market.
Another grower started selling heirloom beans about the same time I started, and we traded seeds with one another. By working together and making referrals to one another, we soon had a lot of customers buying heirloom beans—and not just those people who had grown and eaten such beans in their earlier years. Soon heirloom beans came to be in demand by people who had never eaten any beans other than the commercial, machine-harvested ones.
In 1988, freelance writer Judy Sizemore wrote an article about our small farming operation for The Rural Kentuckian (now Kentucky Living). In the article, she described the ways we had come to participate in the Lexington and Berea farmers’ markets and the fruits and vegetables we had been growing and selling for many years. She also described the heirloom beans and tomatoes we were growing, especially the greasy beans (so named because they have slick hulls and look as if they have a thin coat of grease on them).
Within a week after the article came out, I started getting phone calls and letters from people interested in purchasing some of our greasy beans. Almost without exception the phone calls and letters spoke of the superiority of heirloom beans when compared to commercial beans. Many customers wanted to purchase greasy beans to grow in their own gardens, while several proposed trading seeds with me. Others simply wished to send me beans that had been in their families for generations that they would like to see spread around.
One man from London, Kentucky, came by our house and brought an heirloom bean from Morgan County, Kentucky, called the Nickell Bean. I gave him some of our beans in return but unfortunately did not get his name and address, since I had not yet started formally collecting bean varieties and was unaware of the importance of documentation.
Over the next few months, things began to explode, because people were sending the magazine to friends and relatives within Kentucky and in other states. I received eighty-six letters from six states within six months. From those letters and the contacts involved, I became a collector, grower, and distributor of heirloom beans. But I was still working in a very informal way and not documenting enough. I certainly became aware that there were a lot more beans out there than I had thought.
Finally it dawned on me that I was on to something that would come to occupy a lot of my time and energy. I had been slow to realize that I was involved in an activity that dealt with a lot of history and culture and also tapped into widespread unhappiness with the state of the modern food supply—a food supply increasingly dominated by large corporate farms and multinational food/ feed/seed/chemical conglomerates. (And this was long before the outbreaks of mad cow disease and the more recent problems with tainted food from other countries and the problems with E. coli, salmonella, listeria, and other food-borne pathogens.)
I needed assistance from as many interested people as possible, so in cooperation with my youngest son, an agricultural economics professor, and several other people interested in heirloom fruits and vegetables and sustainable agriculture in general, we formed a not-for-profit corporation, the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center, to develop a seed bank that would house the growing number of heirloom beans (and other vegetables) in my collection.
My son, Michael Best, directed the organization for its first three years and then went back to university teaching. I have directed it since that time, taking the position some years after my retirement from Berea College. Other members of the board come from three states and include retired college professors, a graduate school dean, an educational TV producer, and growers of heirloom fruits and vegetables.
When we set up our website, www.heirlooms.org, the organization became the focal point for many seed savers and others wishing to become involved with heirloom gardening. I started receiving Appalachian heirloom beans from people in many states and requests from hundreds of people.
Other growers also bought into the idea of growing and selling quality beans, and today heirloom beans could easily and quickly corner the market if enough were available. But because seeds must be saved and the beans must be picked by hand, there often is not enough supply to meet demand, even with prices at $3.00 to $4.00 or more per pound.
Part 1 Heritage fruit and Heirloom Seeds
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.
Our Appalachian Beans Came from Where?
There are many ongoing discussions about where the beans of the Southern Appalachians originated. The debate has intensified 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,
