The Economics of Beans

During his two-year sojourn in the woods at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau raised beans, not necessarily for profit (although he did sell his harvested crop for a good return on his investment) but for more philosophical reasons: “They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus . . . I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work.”

Thoreau’s bean field was an ambitious project—2½ acres of rows totaling seven miles in length. This sounds like an exaggeration but is not. If one does the same calculations Thoreau must have done (he was a land surveyor, among other things), one arrives at the same seven-mile figure. 2½ acres = 108,900 square feet. He says the rows were fifteen rods (275.5 feet) long and were three feet apart. This gives a width of 440 feet (275.5 x 440 = 108,900) and 146.66 rows (440 ÷ 3 = 146.66). Total row length, then, was 36,298 linear feet (275.5 x 146.66 = 36,298) or 6.87 miles.

My own bean-growing project was on a far more modest scale: two twenty-five foot rows. But the return on my investment was even better than Thoreau’s. Thoreau spent $3.12 for beans for seed and sold his nine-bushel, twelve-quart (300 quart) crop for $16.94, a 543% return on his investment. I spent $3.18 for two $1.59 packets of seed beans which yielded me a crop of about sixteen quarts. At $1.89 for a 32 ounce package of frozen green beans at my local supermarket, sixteen quarts would cost $30.24, a 950% return on my investment! In macroeconomic terms, spending one’s summer tending beans in order to save $27.06 may not seem like a good investment of time but as Thoreau was aware, there are also philosophical considerations, some of them unanswerable: “But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my curious labor all summer . . .” And so it was mine.

Thoreau planted his beans on June 1; I planted mine on May 1—a mistake, as it turned out. Although the seed packages recommend planting “after all danger of frost,” the ground also must be thoroughly warm for beans to germinate properly. After waiting in vain for the plants to emerge through three unseasonably cold and rainy weeks, I was finally forced to plant my beans all over again. The conventional wisdom of planting on Memorial Day in Massachusetts is probably a good rule of thumb. After that, if you have the space, succession plantings can be made every few weeks up to about eight weeks before the first anticipated frost. I made two plantings: the first around May 25 and the other about four weeks later.

Beans are one of the easiest vegetables to grow and once the plants have emerged, require very little care beyond weeding and watering during dry spells. The gardening books all say never to handle or work around your beans while they are wet as doing so may transmit diseases. Thoreau (a nonconformist, remember) advises differently: “. . . “though the farmers warned me against it, I would advise you to do all your work if possible while the dew is on.” I think I would stick with the farmers and the gardening books.

My first row of beans was ready to begin harvesting about the third week of July (approximately eight weeks after planting). I enjoyed successive pickings every few days thereafter for several weeks by which time my second crop was well on its way. I soon discovered that it was easy to let the beans get ahead of me—neglect them for a few days too many and they grow long and tough. And so my beans began to tyrannize me; it was they, not I, who dictated when they would be picked and, once picked, when I would have to drop everything else to freeze them, for they must be frozen fresh. Thoreau seems to have been subtly aware of this role-reversal in which the beans begin to dictate to the gardener rather than the other way around: “Meanwhile my beans . . . were impatient to be hoed . . . indeed, they were not easily to be put off.” Thus, day after day I made fresh pickings until my wife almost dreaded seeing me come in from the garden with yet another colander full of beans to freeze.

Beans may be canned in glass packing jars, of course, but that is a whole different topic. Freezing them is far simpler and I found it enough work to keep ahead of my beans without becoming involved with sterilization procedures, pressure-canners, canning racks, jars, lids, rubber rings and other paraphernalia. To freeze beans, follow this simple process:

• In a large saucepan or kettle, bring to a boil a sufficient quantity of water to cover the beans.
• Place the beans in a colander or wire basket and blanch 2 ½ minutes in order to stop all ongoing enzymatic activity.
• Lift the beans from the boiling water and immediately submerge them in a sink full of ice-cold water.
• Chill the beans until they are cool throughout, drain and package in labeled and dated 8, 16, or 32 ounce zip-lock bags ( smaller packages are more versatile for small meals).

When the cold weather arrives, you will be ready to start thinking of making the first vegetable stew of the winter—unless you are like Thoreau who, after all of his labor in the bean field, decided “it was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of India.”