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!