She had an electric oven but preferred the wood cookstove. She planted her beans for the first time in 1934. Granny Ruby had been growing the beans since the first spring after she married my grandfather, Clifton Forester Caudill (born 1913) at the age of 16. When she gave me the green bean seed, Granny Ruby also shared the story of how this plant came to be in my family – passed down through the generations, usually at the time children married and started raising and feeding their own families. She has always timed her planting by the Farmer’s Almanac and still calls to tell me when it’s a good time to plant.
#Ruby runner beans how to#
She demonstrated how to plant various vegetables, showing me the spacing and depth for each one.
As a child she taught me to raise a garden. Granny Ruby, now 97 years old, had already given me so much. Now we cook the dried beans at Thanksgiving or Christmas as an extra special treat. Drying beans was a good way to preserve them before refrigeration was available. She usually cooked them fresh from the garden or canned them, but called them drying beans because they were good to dry for shucky beans. Her beans were the highlight of most every family meal. When my grandmother, Ruby Haynes Caudill (born in 1917 and pictured on the left in the photo at the top) saw my big yard, she pronounced “With a place big enough to grow a garden, it would be a sin not to have one.”Īlong with the responsibility of planting a garden, my Granny Ruby also offered me some green bean seeds that she had been growing for years. When I was in my 30s, I moved from the small community of Carcassonne, Kentucky, to the town of Whitesburg to live in the house that my husband’s grandparents built in 1920. In the pocket of the sweater Ruby will be wearing, Teresa placed a few bean seeds. Ruby Caudill will be laid to rest today (February 25, 2017) in her family cemetery in Carcassonne, Kentucky. While surrounded by family in a hospice facility, she asked Teresa to see if the kitchen had pans large enough for her to cook a meal for everyone. Teresa Collins, the author and Ruby’s granddaughter, said “Granny Ruby” remained family focused throughout her life. Equally important, she passed on the stories that make the plant so precious to her family. Ruby Caudill played an important role in preserving the heirloom bean plant that is the focus of this article.
We’re republishing it in honor of Ruby Haynes Caudill, who passed away February 19 at the age of 99. EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared in the Daily Yonder October 8, 2014.
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