I've had these beans in a bottle since 1976, I think. They are just now starting to change color (not in a good way), so I'm thinking it's time to release them and set them free. You never know with beans.
Why would I have kept beans from 1976 you (rightly) ask? The beans in a bottle were a gift from my friend, Jim Gerritsen, who grew the beans and sealed them up good and tight, not imagining (I'm sure) that they would remain that way for over three decades.
I met Jim in a folkdancing class at Humboldt State. I have no idea why he was there. He was not a folkdancer. But we became friends and I had a front row seat to the beginnings of his life as a farmer, watching as he worked out his plan to buy twenty acres of farmland in Aroostock County, Maine, and become an organic potato farmer. Jim's the one who talked me into buying two Saanen goats (while I was still in college), one of which was pregnant, thus ultimately making me the proud mother of four goats (and a lot of goat milk).
Jim grew up in an apartment in San Francisco, but was destined to live far away, in harsh but magnificent Maine. His parents knew what kind of a guy he was and allowed him to use the money they'd saved for college to buy the potato farm. Twenty acres. Then twenty more. Don't know how many he's up to now. But I can't help but stand in awe of someone who lived in a tent for the first winter and built a house almost by himself. He had one horse (Dolly) who helped. I went to the farm after I had been wandering aimlessly in Europe for a year. We'd wake up before the chickens, plod out to the forest with Dolly, Jim would cut down a tree, I'd whack off the branches, Dolly would drag the tree home, Jim would dig a hole, while I'd strip the bark. That's how we got the supports for the barn-to-be. I hope it's still standing. It was a lot of work for a gal from the suburbs of San Gabriel.
The great thing about Wood Prairie Farm is that they are totally organic (most likely forged by hours of Arcata co-op meetings), and (somehow, miraculously) totally hip. Well, Jim is always Jim, but organic potatoes are a hot commodity and the farm has been written up in the New York Times and in Metropolitan Home.
Jim met his wife, Megan, when she came up north as an organic farm intern. They now have four children. And a lot of potatoes. If you want to buy true certified organic potatoes, or grains, onions, carrots, baking mixes, dried fruit, nuts and, yes, beans, all created by the hardest working guy I've ever met, and his wonderful family, then follow the link below. The best part is the video farm tour where you can learn all about pennuda oats after blind harrowing, biofumigant rapeseed, and pre-emergent flame weeding.
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