How to save a bean?! Don't let anyone eat them!

I posted earlier about the Green Beans that I grew this past summer and how much I am in love with them!  So I decided for the first time to try to save some of the Royal Burgundy beans, dry them, and see what happened!  I started out doing a ton of research on exactly how this process is supposed to work since I havent done it in the past!  Almost all of the items I read or watched (Thank you YouTube) said to leave them on the vine until they are dry in the pod.

But didn't say how many beans you need to leave on the vine in order to have a meal of dry beans or to have seed!  So I left about 10 bean plants with good produce on them to see if they could dry before the winter set in here in Alaska.

They did not.

So I picked the produce and brought it in the house before the winter snows and freeze made the cold frame inaccessible for much of anything.

I brought them in the house and dried them the rest of the way on paper towels.  Yes - the above picture is the beans drying - only about 7 beans.  I forgot to tell the rest of the eaters here that we were trying to save some of them by drying them.  SO they were eaten - sneakily - from the cold frame!  How do you save a bean?  Don't eat them for starters!

Once the pods are really dry - like old attic dust dry - then you break them open (they mostly just fall apart, but if not give them a little twist and they will open right up), and let the dry beans fall out.  Be ready!  They can be slippery little suckers and the dogs think its fun to get them before you do!  They must be awesome since mom played with them for hours - that's what I imagine the dogs say anyway!

I ended up with about 25 dry beans from the 7 bean pods.  Which isnt too bad I don't think.  But we will NOT be making bean soup with our dry beans!  Let me tell you people - it takes WAYYY more than 10 bean plants to make enough to store for soup or to save for next years seed.  

I am going to try to plant these and see what happens - but I will also be ordering another package or two of the Royal Burgundy beans to grow.  Just in case!

Almost time to be planty people again!  Ready, set, grow!

Be blessed in your endeavors and in life!

Recovery from UP Side Down! Earthquake!

Since the last post about the 7.0 earthquake - that Wicked Alaska Earthquake, I have been a busy bee!  Quilting and cleaning!  There was a ton of glass to clean up after the quake and we are still finding shards and chunks of glass everywhere - no matter how many times I vacuum!  We have had over 6100 aftershocks - although some of them have been 5.0 or close to it.  When does it stop being an aftershock and become a regular earthquake?

I lamented in an earlier post that I would run out of Rye pictures and that I was really sad about that - so the Universe provided and the earthquake shook loose some envelopes that had fallen another time behind a cabinet - So I have some fun pictures that had been lost and forgotten.  He was three.

The holidays are hard here still.  Three Christmases and three New Years we have faced without Rye,even though he has been gone only 28 months,  and now without Chads mom as well - Granny.  This was our first Christmas and New Year without her.  I have had 2 weeks off for Christmas - Christmas break it is called here.  There were some big changes in how we do things now since both Granny and Rye are gone.  We did Christmas Eve with Pap and Christmas morning we were home with Reed and Riley (who are moving out and making their own place in the world - that is hard too- more on that later)!  This was a first year for us that we didnt have to kind of hurry through the stockings (we actually cheated and did stockings on Christmas Eve - it was very fun - I'm sure because it seemed a little naughty) and we just relaxed a bit for the morning before going to Nana's house.

I got a week off from school because of the quake but didn't get to get all of the cleaning up done, even though I did quilt a bit during that time!

Above are a 16 patch in brown and blue that is in progess and part of my "Women of the Bible" blocks that I am working on as part of a fun email kind of class at Sylvias Quilt Depot.  Ill post that later as well.

Quilting still soothes me and I do have a number of new patterns that I am working on designs for.  Stay tuned for some new quilt posts! The linen closet is still a shambles but it is a work in progress!  I got about 1/2 way through the linen closet and took 4 boxes to the local thrift to donate.  I will have about that many more before the closet is declared clean!

I got the office cleaned up a bit and dad thinks he can fix my filing cabinet - such a beautiful piece of furniture that I have had forever and I cant bear to just throw it away!

So for now I am operating out of two drawers and that box in front!  It's ok - I needed to do some shredding and culling of old stuff anyway!  This just forced my hand!

We still haven't hung the art and pictures back up yet because of the shakers - every time that I think about hanging them again we have another shake up!  Same with the tea set I got for my birthday - not worth the risk to display it and have another shake!  So my house still looks a bit shaken and stirred - even though I have now taken down the Christmas decorations such as they are here.  We arent much for decorating anymore in that regard.

Brix the dog hides on Gramma Gittlein's lap during and after a small shaker!  Both of the dogs are skittish, they seem to know when the quakes will come but not what to do when it does!  Brix is the worst and he also hates fireworks so New Years Eve was a terrible adventure with him trying to hide on, behind, and under anyone who would tolerate him clawing at them for a few minutes.  We tried his thunder coat and wrapping him in blankets and holding him to no avail.  We had lots of fireworks around us and two earthquakes that evening, one was a 5.0 and a 4.8.  Scary!

Many of our Alaskans are shaken as well!  They are fragile and tired from earthquake fear! It is hard to sleep when you are feeling 5 or 6 aftershocks a night and they all rumble and make noise when they hit your house and you also wonder "Is this the BIG one?"   I have heard a few people saying they are going back where they came from - as in moving out of Alaska - even if that means they will have to deal with tornadoes and hurricanes!  One gentleman said - "hurricanes and tornadoes you have some warning!  This came out of nowhere and hit us hard!"  A cousin of mine had a lot of damage and her neighbors house has been condemned!  It is terribly sad.  We were terribly lucky house-wise, and we had no home damage, just glass and some memorabilia!

We are slowly getting our feet back under us from all of the shaking and from being shaken by the holidays again.  It still is not easier.  Reed was late getting his shopping done and he said "I suck at Christmas" and I said "No you don't - Christmas sucks for us!"  Someday maybe it won't again.

Here's to a New Year and I hope that if you are shaken and stirred it is because you are mixing up something delightful with ice!  Be well.  Be Happy. Be Blessed. Stay tuned.