Every year, as summer comes to a close, we like to take a moment to take stock. This year, our reflections are all about connections - to family, community, and our childhood selves. And as we think about our Beanstory journey and what we've accomplished, we realize that it's much more about those connections that keep driving us forward.
STATE OF MAINE
- By Katherine Yaphe
There’s nothing like the scent of rosehip bushes, thick salty air, and misty Maine mornings to take me back to my childhood. I’ve just returned to New York after spending the past three weeks in the same beach community I’ve been going to since I was a kid. This place remains largely unchanged year after year. Sure, a few homes have been updated, there’s a new store or two, but for the most part, it’s like I can close my eyes and be 12 or 25 or 42 again. “Rewind and press play”, my sister likes to say. We laugh and recognize the catharsis in this experience.
I’m someone who craves time on my own, but I can’t get enough of our communal living in this place - 12+ family members packed in a single home with another 12+ ‘friends that feel like family’ nearby. These weeks are filled with scenic walks, potluck dinners, beach games, bonfires, waves, and laughter that makes my cheeks hurt.
This year, more than ever, I found myself picking up my camera. My kids (actually, this whole flurry of kids) would roll their eyes when they saw me lug out my Nikon. It was kind of a running joke. But strangely, it wasn’t their mischievous grins that I was after. My guilty pleasure was sneaking off, alone, to capture marshes and foggy mornings.
Upon the first sight of overcast skies, I’d hop on my bike and jet off like a storm chaser. I couldn’t get enough. Why? What is it about taking pictures that I love so much? I think the answer to this question has a lot to do with what fuels me with Beanstory. It’s about capturing and honoring beauty; preserving and protecting.
I desperately want to keep this all going.
My time in Maine also reminded me of the power of community and how much I need it. This year, we’ve seen our Beanstory community grow in unsuspecting and meaningful ways - we’ve had the good fortune of meeting incredible chefs, food influencers, artists, activists, and have engaged in deeper ways with our customers. This is the stuff that fuels me. This is the stuff that makes me profoundly grateful that I’m living this experience.
Let’s be real, it’s a hard gig trying to make money selling beans. But these little gems are the ultimate ice-breakers; opening doors we would have never imagined. Sometimes you have to take a step, or two, before you realize the path you’re on. When the mist clears, there’s a remarkable view.
PINCH OF EARTH
- By Maggie Bentley
Ah, the mighty bean. It has the power to bring folks together, build community, and fuel change. And yet, as I think about this year, what stands out most to me is a deep reconnection (of sorts) that I’ve experienced to what I eat and how It makes me feel.
When I was very young, I had a garden – a tiny raised bed no more than three feet squared. I recall growing carrots and radishes. I may have grown other things but if I did, I don’t think they made it to maturity. Anyways, I remember being very proud of this miniature plot of land. I also remember that anything I grew never reached the kitchen. Instead, I would pull my bounty out of the ground, wipe the dirt off on my shorts, and feast right there on the grass. It was far from prized produce but the mixture of my pride of growing something combined with the earthy residue made it absolutely delicious.
I will never forget that patch of dirt and the happiness it brought.
Many (many) years later, I’m still not one to dwell in a kitchen. As a result, it’s not surprising that I’m not a great cook. In fact, when we started Beanstory, it was with my insistence that all cooking and recipes would have to be done by Katherine. Anything I cook really shouldn't be reproduced.
But sometime over the past year, while rinsing beans of their earthy remnants, I reconnected to an old familiar feeling: being intimately connected to what I was about to eat. The simplicity of the act - rinsing off the earth - brought me back to that burnished place in time, a time when, with bare feet and dirt-smudged shorts, I would eat what the soil had produced.
Maybe that’s the greatest power of beans: the simplicity of their nature and their earthy flavor connect us more deeply to the places they come from, making the road from the field to our plates feels a little bit shorter. And as we soak, rinse and tend to our pots of boiling beans, grown with intention by farmers who care about the soil and the earth, we reconnect to an old place within ourselves, an earthly patch where we can stand, once again, connected to the ground, marveling at what the Earth has produced.