Who Spilled the Beans?

Poroto, Kumanda, Beans!

Here in Parguay, almost every kokue, or small farmed plot, has four main staples: corn, mandioca, sugar cane or pasto, (cattle feed), and beans. Recently, we had the opportunity to help with the bean harvest. As the weather has been extremely dry this year, we all worked together to get the beans out of the field before their pods cracked and the land reclaimed them.

So, off we went at about 6:00am, with our hats and long sleeved shirts, knowing the temperature would rise above 100 degrees before we returned, feed sacks slung over one shoulder, and carrying termos of cold water for terere, (Did I forget to mention the machete? It comes on every trip and is used for everything from removing stickers from pant legs, to hacking at snakes, to punishing a dog- flat side only, of course!).

After a 1 mile walk, we arrived at the bean section of the kokue, were assigned a row, and started picking the beans, by hand. The goal was to fill as many 50 pound feed sacks with bean pods, (dry only- small red bean variety), as we could before it got too hot to work in the sun.

It wasn’t all work though. We spent time laughing, teasing each other about our “bean picking styles”, (heads down with butts up is the norm, sitting will get you a razin’), and of course sharing terere midway through the morning. 

Each day I was able to fill my 50-pound sack of pods, but I was never quite able to balance and carry it on my head as the other woman did. I did try though, and in the process provided lots of entertainment for the others watching my attempts. Fortunately, we did not have to carry our harvest back to the house- an ox cart and a moto took on that task.

The second part of the harvest took place at home. The bean pods were spread out on a tarp, and put in the sun for a day, then, were cracked by hand. 

We spent lots of time sitting in a circle, talking, (mostly listening in our case), and watching the piles of beans grow! 

The family ended up with enough beans to eat for the entire year, plus enough for seed for the next growing season.

On the third day of harvest, I was told that one of the sacks was for Mark and me. Suerte! It yielded 4 ½ , 2 liter bottles full of beans, probably enough to get us though our 2 years of service!