Next week Charley Baer hopes to harvest the heirloom Jacob’s Cattle beans he’s growing for the Shared Harvest CSA.

According to Slow Food USA, “Jacob’s Cattle bean is also called a Trout bean or an Appaloosa bean, but Jacob’s Cattle bean is the oldest name for the variety. This bean is a Prince Edward Island heirloom. Legend has it that it was a gift from Maine’s Passamaquoddy Indians to Joseph Clark, the first white child born in Lubec, Maine.”

Of this year’s crop, Charley writes: “In hot years like this one there is much more red than normal.  This year they are almost pure red with very little white. There is so little white in the few I have checked that they almost look like purple kidney beans with a few white spots. Although a good growing year, yields look like they will be light with weak pod sets coming on Beverly’s sandy soils lacking water earlier on. I’ve got a lot of these purple cows coming in.”

So there you have it, the reason for the one pound bag of purple cows you’ll find in your Shared Harvest CSA share this year!