Farmer’s Choice

Friend’s, what did you do over the holidays? Travel? Visit the folks? Spend time with the folks? Mall tourism? Give, receive and unwrap gifts? Go to church? Give back to society? Indulge in all kinds of sugary and fatty goodness? Nice.. Good job..👍 Because heck! What are the holidays for?

So now, ask me what I was doing over the holiday? Ask me..Just as me.. Please just ask me.. I promise I will not shout.

“Muthoni, what were you doing over the Holiday’s?

Thanks Jane. Thank you for asking. I’ll tell you what I was doing over the holidays.

I traveled to visit my folks for the week and what better time than to visit them while the beans were being harvested.. Because yeah.. I was very much aware of it and I was waiting for this opportune time so as to help them harvest the beans.

“Muthoni, are you being sarcastic?”

“YesJane, you smart girl, I was being sarcastic.”

Anyways, let’s just say, by the time you get beans looking like this,

there are quite a number of processes it has to go through to get that finished product you see.
Here they are:

1. Plant
They are either planted in a line or a zigzag.
It takes 3-5 days to germinate when it rains adequately.

2. Weeding
When it germinates, between the 1st week and the 2nd week the grounds are weeded but the weeding process reduces once they start flowering. After about 3 months of watering or rain, weeding, observation and praying that your beans turn out okay… You harvest.

3. Harvesting
This is where you uproot, carry and then place them on a surface where you will be able to thrash them once the harvesting is done.

4. Thrashing
Here you must look for a suitable stick to beat up the dried pods and apparently there is a specific way its done. You don’t just hit them. You hold the thinner side and hit the pods using the thicker side. Then hit! Hit while thinking about all those who did you wrong last year.. Or those people who chew chewing gum badly.. Spit on the road.. Those who do not understand why you like K-pop.. all those guys who do not tell you have something on your teeth and you’ve already spoken to 30 peeps by the time you notice… Those who pass with your whole arm while they get into the bus…and finally for all those mosquitoes that pass by your ears at night saying,

“Nyee..nyee..nye..bu..bu..”

“Hey, Muthoni, you’ve digressed…”

Oooh, that’s true.. Thanks Jane👍

So yeah… It kind of looks something like this,

Oooh you know, just living my best life while thrashing

Let me tell you, first, I think this could be a great work out for your waist. Like 7mins in the thrashing and I could feel my waist muscles saying something about being uncomfortable with the current state that I was taking it through. Second, you later learn that not only are you drenched in sweat but you learn that even behind your ears.. Behind your ears… You sweat there as well???

“Waow! Really Muthoni? Who would have thought?”

“Yeah Jane… Imagine that..”

5. Winnowing
After the pods are thrashed they are separated and carried away

while beans are collected to be winnowed. This is done not necessarily with a mkeka because of mass production, a bucket here is used to Winnow. You use your senses to tell whether there is wind at that time or not so that you are able to pour the beans from one bucket into another bucket. The process is done over and over until you have more grain than chaff.

6. Store
The beans are then dried so as to obtain a certain standard then later they are treated dried for a bit and then stored and ready ready for distribution.

NB: Before storing you can either put pest control as the beans dry out or in a sac that has pest control.
NB: It takes 90 days from germination to harvesting.

Yeah… And that’s about it.

Let me just say that, those women and man have completely gained my respect. Like I think after that whole experience let me just say, we should not look down upon people in any field or sector. This is because, I tried to do their job only for a day. One day friends.. And I got blisters and a body that was super sore. So sore that I bet a DJ could have made a beat with all the cracking that was happening at the time.

“Hey Muthoni, those stories we used to hear about women going to the shamba with their babies.. is it true?”

Yes Jane, imagine it’s so so true.

Who’s that girl…. lalalalalalalalalalalalala

Dream Team

Also I’m sorry if you thought this blog post was about sausages 😂. Maybe next time it will be. You never Know..

“Hey Muthoni, it’s only fair if I say,
I got beans, greens, potatoes, tomatoes,
lamb, rams, hogs, dogs,
beans, green, potatoes, tomatoes,
chicken, turkeys, rabbit… YOU NAME IT!”

Hahaha Jane! I had completely forgotten about that..

I hope you enjoyed this edition of farmers choice. Until next time.. See you later fam✌ (hehe ‘fam’ hehe)

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