Great Green Bean Bandit

This is the first year UHM and I have had a vegetable garden and we've been thrilled with it so far.  We've harvested beets, lettuce and green beans - lots and lots of green beans.  We almost can't keep up with the green beans.

The other day I got a phone call from a friend whose husband is an avid gardener - 'Come up and pick some beans!'  Well, I didn't want to be rude so yesterday afternoon we headed out to their place.  They live in the Blue Ridge foothills on land that has been in the family for probably a hundred years and have a HUGE garden.  I'll give you a sense of the scale - 100 tomato plants.  It's all grown strictly for pleasure.  They eat what they want from it, can a good deal of it and give the rest away.  We came home with at least 50 lbs of assorted vegetables - including 4 plastic shopping bags of green beans.  Guess how we spent today?

You may remember the green bean extravaganza from last year.  We had another cooler full of beans again this time and my Green Bean Bandit made another appearance.

So far this evening we have canned 7 pints of Dilly Beans (pickled green beans) and another 7 pints of plain green beans.  When I finish this post, I'll be going back to the kitchen to work on blanching and freezing the rest.
Tomorrow I'll start on the 20+ lbs of tomatoes - both red and green - that need processing (while UHM picks more green beans from our garden).  I might be done with everything by Sunday......UHM doesn't think so.