Ken Fry's Hobb's Goose Bean Story
In early 1800s Absalom Hobbs shot a goose in Lee County, a triangle on the western tip of Virginia in the Appalachian mountains.
Inside the goose's crop Absalom found a white bean freckled with red splotches. He planted it and the resulting buttery bean became a family favorite.
Absalom passed it on to his children, who passed it to theirs, eventually landing with Clinton Hobbs, who brought it to Kent OH when he became a biology professor at Kent State in 1945. Hobbs, his wife Olive and their 4 children grew the beans on their Brimfield OH property a remnant of the WWII victory gardens. They ate them as green beans and as shellouts.
I met Mr.Clinton Hobbs at a Master Gardener class where we became friends and he shared some of his Hobbs beans with me shortly before his passing in 2009. I grew his seeds for many years, saving them in a glass jar for the next year. For some reason or another I quit growing them and found the jar again a couple years later. The beans were tan and had a smell to them. I must have put them in the jar not fully dried. I tried getting some to grow even sending some out to other folks to see if they could get them to grow and to no avail. I thought I lost them forever.
One day driving hoe from work, my wife text me that the Kent Free Library received a donation of Hobb's Goose Beans from a farm in Hiram OH,that donated them to the libraries seed library. I immediately turned the truck around and went to the library. I explained to clerk how I received seeds from Mr. Hobbs and let them die and I was so disappointed and I asked her if there was anyway I could have few even though they weren't out for the public yet. She reached under the counter and pulled out a ziplock baggie with some of the beans in it. And gave me 6 beans. I told her I would bring tomato seeds back for the library in trade and indeed I did. I have been growing them ever since and I will not make that mistake again.
Inside the goose's crop Absalom found a white bean freckled with red splotches. He planted it and the resulting buttery bean became a family favorite.
Absalom passed it on to his children, who passed it to theirs, eventually landing with Clinton Hobbs, who brought it to Kent OH when he became a biology professor at Kent State in 1945. Hobbs, his wife Olive and their 4 children grew the beans on their Brimfield OH property a remnant of the WWII victory gardens. They ate them as green beans and as shellouts.
I met Mr.Clinton Hobbs at a Master Gardener class where we became friends and he shared some of his Hobbs beans with me shortly before his passing in 2009. I grew his seeds for many years, saving them in a glass jar for the next year. For some reason or another I quit growing them and found the jar again a couple years later. The beans were tan and had a smell to them. I must have put them in the jar not fully dried. I tried getting some to grow even sending some out to other folks to see if they could get them to grow and to no avail. I thought I lost them forever.
One day driving hoe from work, my wife text me that the Kent Free Library received a donation of Hobb's Goose Beans from a farm in Hiram OH,that donated them to the libraries seed library. I immediately turned the truck around and went to the library. I explained to clerk how I received seeds from Mr. Hobbs and let them die and I was so disappointed and I asked her if there was anyway I could have few even though they weren't out for the public yet. She reached under the counter and pulled out a ziplock baggie with some of the beans in it. And gave me 6 beans. I told her I would bring tomato seeds back for the library in trade and indeed I did. I have been growing them ever since and I will not make that mistake again.