How to Harvest Green Beans

Step 1: Prepare to spend nearly all day (Saturday, August 29th) doing something green bean. I say "nearly" because the Henrie family slept in and didn't really start our day until noon or one o' clock. 

Step 2: Pick the 60 feet of green beans from the garden, shove the plants in the back of  the Jeep, and dump them on the driveway to begin picking. 

CAUTION: Watch out for that big black and yellow spider. You saw it when you went to grab a big armful out of the Jeep, but you lost it. And now that that mountain heap of green beans is on the pavement, you know it's in there... somewhere... You just don't know where...

Step 3: Let the boys help. Parker and Stockton wanted to. When they don't want to anymore, let them ride wiggle riders and eat watermelon. Deacon wanted to.

**Side note: Deacon crawled all through the garage and all over the driveway all while eating watermelon triangle after watermelon triangle. Note his sticky, dirty legs and the upended bowl. But, man, take a look at that face! Pure joy, right there!

Step 4: I said watch out for that spider! 

Don't let it crawl on your knee and don't hold it too close to Stockton!

Step 5: You can try canning them for the first time canning anything ever, if desired. And when I say, "If I can do it, you can," I have never meant anything more sincerely in all my twenty-seven years.

And that's how the Henries harvest green beans. You can share some, you can freeze some, you can bottle some. Just don't start a second batch at 11:00 at night. Unless you really want to stay up until 1:30am. We wanted to...

...go to bed.