Shelling dried green beans

Over a month ago, right before our first hard frost of the fall, we pulled all of the bean plants from the garden, and hung them up on the clotheslines on the sunporch to finish drying. The majority of the plants were our dry beans, both dragon tongue and kenearly yellow eye. But some of the plants were green bean plants with mature-looking green beans on them. We dried them to save the beans for planting next year.

The dry beans I dealt with pretty quickly, as the clotheslines full of drying bean plants were seriously impairing our view of the fields from the living room. As far as the dry beans go, the kenearly yellow eye were very easy to shell, and most had actually fully dried outside on the plant before our first frost, so I prefer growing them, but they didn't have anywhere near the yield as the dragon tongue. However the dragon tongue were such a pain to dry and harvest, as they not only molded on the sunporch but got covered in spider mites & their webbing, that I think I might be looking for a shorter season dry bean to add to the kenearly yellow eye next summer.

The green bean plants were a little out of the way where they were hung, and there weren't as many of them, so they've been ignored for the most part, although my husband has mentioned dealing with them himself a couple times, if I didn't hurry up and clean them up. Of course, him 'dealing' with them would be just tossing them out to the chickens, beans and all, so I have been assuring him I would be dealing with them 'soon'.

Well this weekend 'soon' came, and Little M and I pulled the very dry beans off the plants, and then shelled them. There were 2 different types of beans that we grew this past summer - blue lake bush and kentucky wonder bush. The blue lake bush seems to have done better, but it was hard to tell this year as the plants were in mixed rows due to poor germination. I'll plant both again this coming summer and try to keep track of which does better here.