Leather Britches Beans

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Kristen Maurer calling from Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Hello, Kristen. Welcome.

What’s up? What can we help with?

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, sure.

I’m actually, I’m calling because my grandmother was born in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.

And if you’ve ever met anybody who was raised in the mountains of Appalachia, you’ll typically find that they have like this very unique way with words.

They have like lots of earthy and sort of humorous figurative language.

Similes, metaphors, that sort of thing. And when I was a little girl, she always raised gardens.

And I remember at least a few times or a couple times per season, she would make a comment about how it was time to string the leather britches, to string up the leather britches or hang the leather britches.

And like, I know that that has something to do with a form of preservation for green beans.

But I guess what I’m really curious about is, first of all, like where on earth did this terminology evolve from?

But then specifically, was she referring to like a certain variety of green beans?

Or was this just sort of a blanket term for the preservation process of any type of bean?

Yeah, this was a way to dry beans so that you could use them later.

These days, most people think of green beans as beans as something you pluck from the garden and you have to use them before they spoil in the next few days or week or so.

But you could run a string through the end of the beans, hang them on the wall or out in the sun so that they dried,

And then you would always have beans on hand that you would then soak like regular dried beans and then cook with, mixed with your hog fat and your potatoes and onions or whatever.

And I do remember seeing that in her home.

I remember seeing her doing that.

But I guess the biggest thing that I’ve always been thinking about is that why leather britches?

I mean, I guess I’m curious to where that evolved from.

Well, they’re brown, right?

The beans, once they dry, are brown.

Do you remember that?

Well, that’s true, yeah.

And they’re kind of coarse and rough,

And they look a lot like leather.

Don’t think of the leather pants, the sexy leather pants that someone might wear now,

But more like the cowboy’s chaps or something like that.

Right.

Well, that makes sense.

Yeah, rough and brown.

Course and kind of shaped like that? Well, it’s funny because I actually called a couple seed companies because I also garden. And a couple of years ago, I thought, well, I’m going to call around and see if I can try to find this type of green bean that my granny used to grow.

And what was amusing about it is I said, you know, I’m looking for this bean. I believe it’s called leather britches. And the people were just like baffled. They’re like, this lady’s off a rocker because they’re like, what is she talking about? So they obviously didn’t know that this was a form of food preservation either.

Yeah, that’s super interesting. It’s regular green beans, as far as I know, as far as I’ve ever read. It shows up in a ton of folklore. Do you know the Foxfire books? There’s a long passage in there where people describe in detail how they preserve their beans in this way.

And it sounds like regular old green beans or string beans.

And interestingly, they’re not called string beans because you string them up and dry them. They’re called string beans because they have a string on them that you tear off before you cook them.

Right. Okay. Well, I’ve heard of those Foxfire books. I’ve always wanted to read them.

Yeah, they’re good.

Look them up. There’s people talking in natural, regular voices in that, a lot of times, in that Appalachian English that you mentioned.

Yes. Well, I’m going to do that.

Well, I really appreciate you guys taking my call.

I just love your show.

Thanks for sharing your family memories, too.

Have a great day.

All right. Bye-bye.

Leather britches.

They’re not the only ones, by the way, just to make that clear.

Leather britches for dried beans that you kind of hang on the wall until you need them is widespread throughout the United States.

I did not realize that.

It’s not common, but it exists enough that it shows up in dialect dictionaries.

And like I said, you can see it in books of folklore and old recipe books.

And in church suppers and dinners on the ground.

Oh, my gosh.

I don’t eat meat now, but I’m drooling.

I am, too.

I’m just thinking about that.

When you’re the lucky one who gets that big piece of fatback or salt pork in your spoon, in your spoon of beans.

Your spoon of beans.

Your spoon of leather bridges.

877-929-9673.