Playhouses are for Sissies
by Jeannie Travis
I use white half runner beans but you can use whatever type of bean you like. Pick them straight from garden when they are full, tender, nice and clean ( not after a rain) when they might be muddy. Nub (break off ends) and string ( pull strings off the outsides of the pods) of the beans, don’t break them up, don’t wash them, just wipe off any dirt with your hands and then string or sew them up on the thread.
Get a spool of quilting thread from Wal-mart or fabric store because it is a little heavier then regular thread. Thread a long slender sewing needle with about 2 foot of thread. Put the needle through the center of a long bean first and tie the thread around it to make a sturdy base. Avoid putting needle through an actual bean but just through the long bean fiber or pod. Continue until you have a long string of beans. Leave some extra thread at top of string so you can tie it off and make a loop to hang it by. Hang over a clothes hangar and hang up in kitchen to dry or on sunny days you can take it outside and hang the clothes hanger of beans from nail on the porch or over the clothes line. Just let them dry up and they will shrink and end up about half of what you put on the string….
Another old timey way is to break them up, put them on a clean sheet and take outside and lay them over a patio table or the like on sunny days and they will dry. Just bring them in at night. After they are totally dried and brittle I have put mine into container
or bag and put them in freezer so no bugs can get into them.
To cook, take them off the string, wash the dried beans and then soak them overnight in water. Drain water, wash and then cook as you would regular beans…adding a big ham hock or piece of salt bacon as seasoning. They take awhile to cook so you must keep adding water and they do swell up to make a big pot of beans. They do have a very unique flavor. Bake up a big pone of corn bread, fry up an iron skillet of taters and you are in business…enjoy!
Boys played at farming, and girl’s had play house, that is if they were ‘normal’ girls. Mama told me years later that she finally gave up on getting us interested in play houses…she would set them up for us, look out awhile later to see how we were doing and we would be climbing trees, etc.
An ‘elderly’, At least 35 or 40, neighbor lady that didn’t know about this helped us set up a playhouse near her driveway once…nice ditch , bank etc…She put dry dock seed on a hollowed out sand rock for coffee grounds – little round stones were potatoes, etc. She really got into it and had a great time but we lost interest and never played there again – ‘Miss’ Mariney Beasley – a wonderful neighbor.
We made stilts, walked on the cans when we could find them…etc ,but back then folks ate home canned foods mostly. The canned milk was left setting out on the table to pour into grownups coffee. Remember how it had 2 little holes poked in the top? Never knew of it spoiling. My thrifty ex Mother in law would pour a small can of Pet milk into a quart milk bottle then fill it up with water to use in coffee…this was refrigerated between uses.