Eating broad beans

Finally after months of agony and hard work, the crop is ready to eat.

To remind you, I planted the seed in early November, intending on an early crop to reduce losses to black fly.  The beans were germinated and up in early December and in February I posted a picture of two elegant wide rows of young plants, despite some frost damage.  In late April they were covered in flowers and I was worrying about whether there were enough bees avoiding the best efforts of the cats to keep them away from the job of pollinating.

We need not have worried - once again we have a bumper crop and only have two plants with a bit of black fly (which the chickens think are totally the best thing ever - they are odd!).  We are currently enjoying young and tender beans so they just get boiled for a short while and then a little butter and mixed with whatever else we are eating.

Soon they will become a bit more coarse and then we will have to peel the beans as well as taking them out of their pods to make a lovely dip that rivals guacamole or cooking them gently for about 4 hours with smoked bacon to make a lovely rich and satisfying paste that goes well on French bread.

Naturally we will also be saving a number of prime pods to save the seed for the next crop - this strain is developing so well, we would be mad to lose it.

See how wonderful the fresh beans look, and 8 beans in one pod too!

Comments

[Kelle]

Very nice article. I certainly appreciate this website. Keep writing!