WHAT’S IN SEASON: Organic pole beans at Bedford Farms

Pole beans are in season at Bedford Farms. Above, farmer Heidi Johnston checks the crop. Amy Sowder Photos

By AMY SOWDER

From the road, Bedford Farms looks like a lovely garden shop designed in the refined rural style which people in Bedford and nearby Pound Ridge are accustomed to.

But park your car, breeze by the greenhouse of houseplants, the jaw-dropping dinner plate hibiscus and pretty potted perennials outside and open the front glass door. Then discover that each step reveals layer-upon-luscious-layer of country-chic  gardening confections — with the freshest-possible produce prize at the very end.

The shop

If you can, look past the shelves of plump peaches and bulbous heirloom tomatoes, farm-to-table cookbooks, natural candles, tea towels, stoneware, houseplants, jams, seeded crackers and hot sauces. To the back on the left is the Coffee Bar of Bedford Farms serving Brooklyn-based Parlor Coffee Roasters drinks and Brewster’s General Bakeshop pastries and sandwiches. Upstairs, expect private events and public workshops.

“Every weekend, we have something going on: food, plants, artistic workshops, and outside, yoga in the garden,” said Beth Metzger, part of Bedford Farms’ support staff. “We invite people to walk through the farm.”

Back downstairs, the rear door beckons customers with natural light spilling from outside, where a wooden porch with ample seating invites guests to rest, nibble on a snack and drink in the view for a moment. 

And what a view it is, underlined by white gladiolas nodding in the breeze. 

“We grow several varieties of dahlias and frequently harvest wildflower bouquets from our native pollinator garden, which can be found on the path to the veggie garden,” said Max Apton, who bought Bedford Farms about two years ago. He renovated it inside and out, opening a new, much-expanded retail shop in February.

The farm

“Everything is grown organically and with care for the soil and watershed we reside in,” Apton said. That’s in no small part the handiwork of farmer Heidi Johnston, former owner of the Yellow Monkey Antiques in Cross River.

“This is my retirement job,” she said with a grin, wiping sweat from her brow as she set the sprinkler on a different row of glistening tomatoes and wove through the soil in her hiking boots.

Protected from the August sun by her straw hat, Johnston pushed aside some vines and plucked multicolored pole beans from their rows, just past the monarch butterflies and bumble bees dancing from golden black-eyed Susans to purple coneflowers.

The bean

Made possible by those bees, the produce prize of early August’s vegetable world is the young, lithe, snappy bean. Call them pole beans, string beans, green beans, haricot verts, or whatever you want, these beans started coming in at the end of July, and they’re at their youthful peak in early to mid August, lasting through September. 

They’re planted from seed and the vines grow up toward the sun if they have the wooden poles to grasp. Johnston gives those tendrils more to hold onto with the plastic netting she attaches, like a temporary fence.

While the trio of green, yellow and purple string beans offers a riot of color, Bedford Farm’s most scintillating variety is the rattlesnake bean. 

Flatter than the others, the rattlesnake pole bean is green with little hyphens of purple — kind of like purple confetti, or, say, reptilian scales.

“These are delicious. I like to eat them as I pick,” Johnston said. “I like a young haricot vert. They’re very sweet and colorful on your plate.”

The purple-streaked heirloom variety of pole bean is a prolific producer that enjoys hot weather and has excellent flavor as a snap bean, and it dries well too.

Despite one of their nicknames, pick all varieties of pole beans before they grow too mature and get stringy, Johnston advised.

The solid yellow Carminat, green Seychelles and purple Monte Gusto beans are rounder. “I find the yellow to be very tender,” Johnston said.

Many purple varieties of vegetables — from pole beans to asparagus and broccoli — turn green when you cook them, due to the heat decomposing the anthocyanin chemical that creates blues, reds and purples. The heat dilutes the acidity of the cell sap. To prevent or reduce this color change, soak the purple beans in vinegar or lemon juice to increase the acidity. Then, cook the beans very minimally.

“I like to cook up huge batches, the way my husband likes them, and then I like them cold in salads, like rice salads,” Johnston said. She loves the way green pole beans are used in the Gigi salad served at the Palm Restaurant in Midtown Manhattan: with shrimp, hardboiled eggs, tomatoes, onions, bacon, iceberg, roasted peppers, avocado and garlic vinaigrette.

“It’s a very hearty dinner in New York, especially when it’s 100 degrees outside,” she said.

Bedford Farms is located at 235 Greenwich Road, Bedford.