jacob's cattle

we spent a lovely little chunk of the weekend shucking jacob's cattle beans. sitting on the back stoops, watching the sky change from blue to yellow, orange, red; with kid A trying to help shuck - that's how we ended our weekend. all we needed was a little history lesson on the bean....

the big JC bean has also been called 'trout' bean or 'appaloosa'.  the variety appears to be a prince edward island heirloom that came to the pilgrims as a gift from the Passamaquoddy tribe (now) in maine.  legend has it the gift was to Joseph Clark, the first white baby born in easternly lubec, maine. (thanks slowfoodusa)


here are ours, 
still drying and for some reason
less marbled than others,
but still awful pretty. we planted in early june, got about a quart of beans,
and the row was about 10ft long.  
many of our beans (chickpeas, soldier, and pinto) were planted in 4 rows per bed, including jacob's cattle.  we found it took about a half a pound of beans to fill one bed. we bought 2 oz of j's c, so guess it's safe to say every 2 oz of jacob's cattle seed makes about 1 quart of beans.


that said, it's worth noting that
all of our plants were not as big as the could be, probably because the land was freshly tilled (i.e. lots of sod chunks). so the 2oz = 1q is a lower limit, we're hopeful we'll get more in the future!