Buckskins -- are they horses or beans?

                                              Buckskin Bean Ragout

                                                    buckskin beans

                                                    fresh scallions

                                                    celery

                                                    stewed tomatoes

                                                    Italian spices

                                                    cilantro

                                                    

Hi Winnie and Steve,

Hey Steve, I thought you'd get a kick out of that title about whether buckskins are horses or beans.  You are the only person I've met who has been in the U.S. Cavalry.  There is something so romantic about that.  I remember your stories about some of the drills your unit did in a huge arena with horses 10 and 20 abreast.  It almost gives me goosebumps thinking about it.   When you visited us at the ranch, I believe we were reseeding a pasture and had to move the horses out of the barn to a small field to graze each morning.  Later I asked you what you liked most about California, and it turned out to be leading the horses up the dirt road each morning to the upper pasture.

So, I thought you might enjoy knowing that buckskins are a type of bean also.  I'm assuming it is a recognized type of bean, but I'm not 100% sure on that.  Last fall, we went to visit our friends Jered and Nancy at Pie Ranch.  Jered was in the old roadside barn with some of the farm interns, and they were sitting on the floor shelling beans that had been dried in the sunshine.  Beans are one of the crops at Pie Ranch.  We ended up helping, and of course we all talked as the shelling went on  -- a very enjoyable atmosphere.  When we were done, the amount of beans we had in the buckets was not huge, but there was a certain kind of satisfaction from the hand work associated with the process of how we get our food.

Now, of course, I think of those beans in a very different way -- when I take the jar down I think of that day.  We were given a bag of beans as the "fruit of our labor", and I still have a bit of the buckskin beans from Pie Ranch in a jar on my kitchen shelf.  I've now labeled most of the bean jars to help others who join me in the kitchen.  I served the buckskin beans yesterday, and I always think -- "what greens are going to go in this dish?".  I used almost the last of the cilantro and celery in my garden since the heat last week made it bolt.

Thinking of you.  Donna