Trail of Tears Beans

On June 3, I wrote a blog about my raised bed garden and how it and the chickens fared while we were gone on a short vacation.  

http://windyacresnaturalfarm.blogspot.com/2012/06/short-vacation.html

In that entry, I told a little bit about the Trail of Tears beans which were brought to Oklahoma by the Cherokee Indians on the Trail of Tears.  I grew these beans in one of my beds this year.   This is what they looked like after they grew to cover the "teepee" support structures.  I only had a small package of seed and it was only enough to make 4 of the teepees like you see below.

The bean pods started out green, like most beans, but turned a beautiful shade of purple.  

As luck would have it, I didn't get around to harvesting these before the heat and drought set in for the summer.  So, the pods got way too tough to cook as "green" beans and I decided to let them dry on the vine and collect the seed.  You may be surprised to know that the seed themselves are black!

I was able to collect about half a sandwich bag of seed. That will give me enough seed to plant a lot more teepees than I did this year.  I sure won't have enough room for these in my raised bed garden, so I may have to ask Tom to save room to plant them in the field.  Of course, we'll need a lot more poles for the teepees, too.  Maybe I'd better start sweet-talking him now to get him to go to the extra time and trouble!