The Commonwealth of Kentucky has a long-distinguished history of seed selection and preservation. Before Bill Best got serious with heirloom green bean seeds, there were Native Americans who put Kentucky on the world map before there were maps: four thousand years ago.
Kentucky seldom gets credit for being a world center of plant domestication, but Kentucky is right up there with Mesoamerica for corn and Africa for barley and oats.
Native Americans selected lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium sp.) and gourds for their bigger seeds and thinner seed coats as well as for their easier germination. They stored their seeds in the dry rock overhangs around the Red River Gorge in Eastern Kentucky. Gourd seeds didn’t win the race to the top of the food chart, but archaeological evidence suggests early breeders and seed collectors knew what they were doing.
Lamb’s quarters, Chenopodium album. Leaves are delicious.
There have also been Kentucky carbon-dated beans at least 1,000 years old. These could be “cut-shorts” that are still popular heirloom beans in the Southern Appalachians. They are called cut-shorts because the seeds completely fill the pods, which are squared off at the ends.
The “three sisters”—beans, corn and squash—have been staples in Southern Appalachian gardens for as long as gardens have been planted. Beans fixed nitrogen for corn that, in turn, provided support for the climbing beans. The ground-covering squash smothered many of the weed seedlings.
Bill Best realized that it was time to look back to a period when heirloom strains of beans were shared in a community simply because they tasted good.
Best has spent a long time looking to the past to save the future. He is a Berea College professor emeritus and co-founded the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center there.
The Best Quest
His goal was to search for the most flavorful homegrown regional vegetables. As a child growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Haywood County, North Carolina, he had savored the taste of heirloom green beans and tomatoes.
Hindman Settlement School photo.
The more popular green bean seed strains lacked the taste that he remembered from his youth. Newer hybrids were bred for mechanical harvesting. “I couldn’t believe how bad the Blue Lake bean was.”
“The high price of cheap food kicked flavor to the curb,” Bill Best says.
Best started the non-profit Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center in the 1990s to prove that “products this region can produce can compete with large-scale farms based on quality… We want to use our skills and information base (developed over many decades) to bring to the forefront the importance of quality heirloom fruits and vegetables. It is our hope that this Center will go far toward making mountain agriculture sustainable.”
For years he has shared his seeds around the world.
Bill Best holding Leather Britches heirloom beans. Dobree Adams photo.
Willard Wynn, a yellow bi-color in Bill Best’s hand. Barbara Best Toti said, “Sold out for the season. Usually have a waiting list!”
Bill Best is disturbed over the monopolization of modern agricultural seed. He’s doing his best to increase options, not minimize them. He has collected over 1500 different bean seed strains to preserve for future generations and his family’s non-profit lists about 200 heirloom beans in inventory now.
Cornfield, Cut-Shorts, Greasy Beans, Fall Beans, Wax Beans and Butter beans
Kentucky Heirloom Seeds—Growing, Eating, Saving, written by Best with Dobree Adams, and published in 2017 by the University Press of Kentucky, is storytelling at its best. It offers good advice, also, plus an extensive reading list for further thought. Saving seeds for next year has been a traditional practice for thousands of years. And it’s not that difficult. Bill Best appreciates the gardeners and farmers who’ve learned the value of good seeds and flavorful vegetables. Available from the Center’s website,
Dobree Adams, a mutual friend of ours, said, “Bill is a genuine heirloom himself: growing, eating, and saving heirloom vegetables, especially beans and tomatoes. Years ago, he was a co-founder of the hugely successful Lexington Farmers Market and started or inspired many seed swaps as well as gardeners and farmers.”
I called Bill a few weeks ago and asked how he was doing. “Okay, but still here,” he said. Then he began talking with the exuberance he’d shared in our last conversation in 2016. Bill is 90 now.
Bean Stories are Fascinating and Funny
The turkey craw heirloom bean seed, as legend has it, was found in the craw of a turkey. And seeds of the Mortgage Lifter tomato helped pay off a mortgage.
Bill Best appreciates the cultural significance of Jack and the Beanstalk, the English folk tale, still popular in the Southern Appalachians.
A modern version, Jack and the Wonder Beans, was beautifully written, in an Eastern Kentucky vernacular, by James Still in 1977. Jack makes a deal with a gypsy and receives three beans. “Not common beans. Not regular beans.” The gypsy calls them “Wonder beans.” She gives Jack simple instructions: “Sow them and they will feed your life tee-total.”
Future Farmers of America of Gates County High School in Gatesville, North Carolina. Population 320.
Bill Best has turned over the reins of the non-profit Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center to his sons and daughter. Michael Best is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University. Michael finds time to return to the family home in Berea to plant seeds, trellis and harvest crops. Other bean and tomato strains are grown in North Carolina and Tennessee. Barbara Best Toti lives in Gatesville, North Carolina and is responsible for order fulfillment with help from a couple of FFA students who sort and shell beans and help with packaging. Brother David keeps the website churning. Barbara said, He’s behind the scenes and I am in front of the scene.”
Get a flavor of Bill Best and his family’s legacy from this short YouTube video.
Great post about saving good seeds. Thank you.
Thanks, Flower. The Bests are doing good work.
Allen,
Thanks for your reminiscences. They are always informative and entertaining.
I offer a couple more thots from your Appalachian neighbor in West Virginia. The Mortgage Lifter tomato was bred in WV. It was started by growing a German Johnson bi-color (generically called “Stripeys” hereabouts) amongst a beefsteak, an English variety, and an Italian variety with hand pollination over several generations. I suspect Jelitto breeds with greater precision and resources.
I don’t wish to revive Hatfield & McCoy rivalries by comparing the horticultural progeny of our respective gardening sites. (I went to Law School with a Hatfield, to whom the conflict was not a folksy tale.) However, I will note that the Golden Delicious apple was discovered in Clay County, WV. It became the best-seller yellow for decades and was part of the parentage of Gala, Jonagold, Pink Lady, and Honeycrisp, among others. WV origin notwithstanding, there is a Kentucky connection. Clay County was named after your Commonwealth’s famous son, Henry Clay.
John
John, thank you for you filling me on West Virginia’s abundant legacy. I’m growing Mortgage Lifter and Mr. Stripey this year. Mr Stipey was a neighbor’s favorite tomato. Disease often takes them out before I can confirm true flavor. I need a sunnier spot with more air drainage.
Allen, thank heavens for these preservationists! And so happy you’ve shown the spotlight on this important project
Thank heavens, indeed.
Great story Allen. We owe a debt of gratitude to the dedicated people such as Bill who have worked to save the seeds of the past for the future. More often than not those seeds make better home garden plants. Unfortunately with some the changing weather patterns is making some of them harder to grow. I belong to Seeds of Diversity and participate in their grow out projects every year. Last year it was Blue Jay beans, an early snap bean offspring of Comtesse de Chambord, saved from extinction by a couple of Canadians. Absolutely delicious! This year it’s some fancy lettuces and a tomato. It’s a lot of fun, and a bit of a privilege, to be able to continue to help preserve our heritage seeds.
Wonderful piece and useful too. Green beans are my favorite and I am curious about planting more than one variety next year.
Thanks Louise. I suspect your grew up, like I did, with heavily salted green beans and a ham hock, boiled to death for hours.
Bill is good people. Your story made me hungry for Lamb’s quarters. My mother used to put ham in with the green beans, and also with turnip greens.
A.,
That, of course, is the correct (Appalachian) way to cook a pot of green beans. Do you all understand slaw dogs (gummy with bread bun, dog, chili, (called “sauce” in some parts), slaw, mustard, and onion? Do you have a position regarding condiments for a bologna sandwich? Mustard? Mayonnaise? Both? Neither? Fried?
J.
John, I never met a hot dog I didn’t like. Well, with exception of truck stop hot dogs the rotisserie for hours. I gave up fried bologna sandwiches on white bread, slathered with Duke’s mayo, and topped with a piece of processed cheese fifty years ago… I’m still tempted occasionally.
I bought beans seeds from there many years ago. I’ve been collecting my own since.
Greasy bean
1/2 runner not tough
The greasy beans have strings…but it is so worth the trouble. They are so darn good.
Melanie, they are so good and stringing beans is worth the flavor.