I’m not crazy, I’m just bored.

Allow me to explain how this “seed” was planted: a few weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend. She was leaving work early that day to go home and can beans. This is a pretty common reason to miss work around these parts, at least in my circle, this time of year. Whether it’s harvesting hay, soybeans, tobacco, or canning, farm work won’t wait on office work. ‘Gotta make hay while the sun shines’ as the saying goes. It would be more accurate if it was ‘while the sun beats down and tries to kill you’, but close enough. So anyway, I was telling her I still have beans my grandmother canned, and she died in 2008. I wouldn’t be scared to eat them; they look alright and have been kept in a dark cabinet upstairs where the temperature doesn’t fluctuate. My friend said that one of her wedding presents from her in-laws was several jars of green beans. They’d been stored in the basement, wrapped in newspaper. And it got me to thinking about the life of a green bean. Some country music artists have written songs about teardrops, and I don’t see much difference. So here goes.

I am told that my mother plant was designed and cultivated on a vast farm in Oregon, among many other certified seeds. I only remember life since I became packaged with roughly 400 of my brothers and sisters. Many of us didn’t make it, we were culled before ever being coated with inoculant. That’s why I was a pink green bean. I was white underneath, though. So anyway, I made it through inspection because I wasn’t deformed and I didn’t have any bug bites. I was as perfect a bean as you’ve ever laid eyes on. So I was placed into a bag, weighed, sealed, and labeled, and then layered into a cardboard box. I awaited transport, which was by train, on a pallet with many just like me.

I eventually arrived far east, and was moved into a cargo truck. Here we got divvied up. I stayed on my pallet, but others went other ways. Life was dark during this time. We just heard movement.

I wasn’t settled long in the warehouse where the truck brought me. Now the other boxes on my pallet were removed and shuffled and restocked, and I was on the road again. It had been four days since I had left Oregon, and I had been pulled off the vine last year. My life was well underway.

When I was finally unearthed from my box, it was in a well lit building that smelled of work. A young person with freckles and a scowl hung me on a metal peg. I didn’t hang there long. A man in overalls and a shirt with snaps and a pocket reached for me. I was quickly handed off to his wife, who used a pencil to strike through a line on her list. A bag of hot pink dyed corn joined me in the basket, along with some cucumber and okra seeds. I knew them from before. Okra are especially difficult to get to know, they’re like little stones. But corn is flashy and friendly and shoots up so quick you don’t recognize it from the day before. They are constantly having to reintroduce themselves. Tomato plants were placed on top of us, and a pack of squash added as an afterthought. There was some discussion of there still being seeds left from last season tucked away in the freezer.

“That’s enough work for one day, we feed half the Valley as it is,” the man in overalls grumbled to his wife.

But then he bought three pounds of onions and a bag of taters. Plus lime and fertilizer, ‘cause you can’t ever have enough lime in these parts. Or so he said. I got the sensation that the lady ringing us up and tossing us in a paper sack would be glad when he got gone. I think his wife felt the same, she was eyeballing the rat poison display pretty hard.

A short ride later, I was dumped unceremoniously onto a wooden table. A plan was hatched but it didn’t seem to be much of a plan since it didn’t deviate from last year’s layout. But that’s ok since he’d put all that cow manure and wood ash down last winter.

It wasn’t long before two or three of us at a time were dropped into little divots in the cold, red, mud. The squash, on the other hand (not the new, but the old, which was indeed found wrapped up in a parcel in the freezer), was planted in little mounds a few feet apart. A shallow trench was dug with a mattock for the okra, and the pods that had soaked in water all day were dribbled along and covered. And all went dark again for seven days and seven nights.

I felt a twisting, an unbearable urge to split. You would think the pain would be excruciating, but it was only mildly uncomfortable as I came apart and burst outward and upward. I wiggled a bit, then really got into it and clawed my way to the warmth and warmer soil. What began as a single tiny little sprout had doubled in size by the next day. I tripled, I quadrupled, I put out leaves. My leaves were green, then greener, then the greenest green. I have no other way to describe them. I’m just a bean, after all.

During this time, the man and woman came by daily, sometimes twice daily, tending the soil by killing invasive weeds, side dressing the corn with nutrients. We got sprayed to keep the itchy creepy crawly bugs off us. We saw toads nearly every night, which helped, too. The sun felt so good in those days, and the nitrogen rich rain even better. We saw deer, and rabbits, and coons, but aside from my neighbor getting nibbled one night, we were no worse for the wear. Once there was a turtle, but he stayed near the tomatoes, and spoke of a black snake in the blackberries along the fence row.

After some time, I began to bear fruit. First came a little hard pod which opened to a white flower that bees and wasps visited, then it fell off to be replaced by a longer, flatter seed pod. Mini mes! It was so exciting! The people picked these when they were still tender, about three inches long. And I assumed they went on to lead a life like mine.

Of course, this wasn’t the case. The first few were cooked immediately and served with hot buttered cornbread, sliced red tomatoes, and fried okra and potatoes. Then, as my companions and I really began to produce, the baby beans met all sorts of fates.

Some were put into a basket and carted to the local farmers market to be hawked over. Others were given by the plastic bags full to neighbors, friends, and people the church ministered to. And a sight were canned, the most glorious fate of all. Because then you were practically immortal. You could live forever behind your glass walls, brought out only when times were thin, or perhaps at a holiday meal. One of the BIG ones, like Thanksgiving or Easter. It was something to aspire to, to be a canned green bean.

But me? My time is finished, my vines have withered. I have served this earth well, and will soon be composted to give life to the next crop. And this was my life. My life as a green bean.