Green Beans Avalanche in my Homesteading Kitchen!

I'm up to my knees in baskets of picked green beans in my kitchen right now. I'm picking almost 20 lbs of them every other day. I'm not complaining mind you. I'm loving it! Last week I planted the final succession planting of bush green beans for the season. They'll be harvestable in early September. As one planting rotation peters out, the next one is ready to be harvested.

A 20lbs harvest will only fill 15 pint jars which means I'll be 4 jars short of a full load. I hate wasting the energy to can without a full canner load, but then I could use my smaller canner and just do multiple batches too which cuts into my time for other things. What I'll usually do is can a smaller load and save the unused green beans to can with the next 20 lb harvest. So every other batch is a small canner load. With the larger canner every third rotation uses every green bean for 19 full jars (a full big canner load) with no beans leftover. After so many years of doing this, I've got the math down pat. 😀

We need them to be able to eat greens beans twice a week until next harvest. This doesn't includes beans added into soups and casseroles. I calculated 104 pint jars for the two of us. We will eat one full jar in one meal unlike other vegetables that can be stretched over two meals. There's 3/4 of a pound of beans in each jar (1/2 a lb serving equals a little over 1/2 a cup for me and a 1/4 of a cup for Mel). We'd need a minimum of 78 lbs to fill 104 jars as just a side dish. But I need extra green beans for beef and chicken vegetables soups, fried green beans, green bean casseroles, etc.

I calculated 6 gallon bags of fried green beans are needed to go with sandwich type dinners. A one gallon bag makes four servings for us. I'll need five lbs for each of dozen jars of beef and chicken vegetable soups I can of which I'll make a total of 24 jars of each for stores. I'll need another 5 lbs for the vegetable based mixed vegetables jars for pot pies and the like. It's these little things that bring the total pounds needed to well over 100 lbs of this one vegetable and every other vegetable in the mix.

Sounds insane for only two people, doesn't it? But take a look at your consumption and you'll soon realize this is what it takes to feed someone for a year. In the mean time, there's the fresh eating of green beans twice a week while the harvest is ongoing too. We'll have almost six months of this going into the stores after the beans are all harvested and the plants are pulled for composting. We will have a six month worth of just in case like last year's garden failure. Keep in mind I'm also saving seed for the next planting too.

I read about the Ruth Stout method of gardening. I wish I knew someone who had horses. Manure and old hay would be a godsend for completing the orchard planting area. The expense of hay is one I'd like to do without, plus we don't have a truck to haul it anymore. I know people have them because I've seen them. We'd have to get a hitch and a trailer to be able to get it. Right now with the months of rain we've had, the main drive in of the driveway is washed out very badly. Nobody wants to chance messing up their trucks even attempting to come down it even with 4 wheel drive. And yet, we go up and down it in Mel's Blazer and the neighbor farther up the hill does too. Of course, we have no choice either if we have to leave. Sigh! It's always something.

Well, I've had enough resting of my foot. It's time to start canning again.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo