When Heather McCann founded her farm, Rustic Outlook, in 2020, she picked a niche that few local farmers have chosen. She decided to make beans her thing.

Dry beans, specifically. They’re a pantry staple that lasts for years and a delicious part of food cultures around the world. They’re also a great source of plant-based protein, grow well in New England, and the demand for better-grown beans is there. So, why not beans?

Those reasons are all part of McCann’s pitch for growing and eating local beans, but not why she first started planting them.

“I was just fascinated,” she says. “I thought bean plants were so cool, and as someone who liked eating beans, I could find so many more varieties to grow from seed catalogs than I could buy in the grocery store.”

McCann’s first dry bean harvest was from a community garden in Watertown, where she lived while working as a librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Soon, she and her husband moved to the Valley for her to take a job at Hampshire College, and her love affair with growing beans was transplanted to the community garden at the New England Small Farm Institute (NESFI) in Belchertown.

The move was in part because of a job, but also “so we could live somewhere with a robust local food system,” McCann explains. “Food choices are so political, and depending on your finances, there are many choices you can make that help to promote the food system you want. I loved what was happening here, especially with CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) supporting smaller-scale farms and raising awareness about buying locally.”

Then, when Hampshire College’s financial instability peaked in 2019, McCann decided to leave her job there and make the leap to commercial farming. Her husband’s job offered enough stability for her to explore it, and on top of the Valley’s strong local support for local food, nationally, the market for beans seemed to be ripening too. Interest in plant-based proteins was taking off for climate and health reasons, and she also saw more home cooks getting excited about the culinary frontiers of heirloom and specialty beans in particular.

“There’s this California company called RanchoGordo, which sells specialty beans from the west coast and Mexico,” McCann says. “The waitlist for their exclusive ‘bean club’ (which ships new varieties of beans to try four times per year) is years long. I thought there’d be enough interested people in the Valley – some of whom might even be on that waitlist – who’d be excited to buy my beans instead, with the added benefit of them not having to come all the way from California.”

As the calendar flipped to 2020, McCann proposal to become an official farm partner at NESFI was approved, and a small plot was carved out for Rustic Outlook. Her plot has grown every year, now totaling about half an acre.

McCann grows other crops too, rotating beans with garlic, onions, and even some strawberries, but these crops take a backseat. To be clear, plenty of other local farms grow dry beans too. Yet on other farms beans mostly show up as part of a crop rotation as farmers try to balance nutrients and disease in the soil. Rustic Outlook’s real focus on beans is what makes them different.

Now in her fifth season farming, McCann has her process dialed in. It starts each spring with mowing and tilling in her cover crop and sending soil samples to UMass to guide how much compost or other soil amendments she should add.

“Beans don’t tolerate frost at any stage, so I don’t plant before May 30th,” she says, “but that gives plenty of time to build trellises for the pole beans. The soil I’m farming is pretty rocky, so I often end up planting by hand, which is pretty labor-intensive. Then I lay down drip tape for irrigation, and mulch with a thick layer of straw to limit weeds.”

As the plants grow, McCann trains them onto the trellises and monitors and deals with pests (looking at you, Mexican bean beetle). She starts harvesting once the beans have dried in their pods still hanging from the plant.

Larger farms often harvest a whole bean crop at once, which is more efficient but means many bean pods will be too young or past their prime. With her relatively small farm, McCann harvests by hand throughout the late summer and fall, picking only what’s ready. Bean pods are laid to dry in a well-ventilated area, then the beans are removed from their shells and set out to dry further until they’re ready for packaging.

Until now, McCann has sold most of her beans to customers face to face at the Belchertown Farmers Market. “I’ve met bean enthusiasts so excited about what I do, and others who say, ‘what do you do with beans?’” she says. “Well, besides amazing soups, chilis and casseroles, you can add beans to almost anything to make it heartier, give it more protein. Beans transform a side dish into a meal.”

Rustic Outlook grows a mix of familiar options like black, kidney and pinto beans alongside less common varieties like Tiger’s Eye (a pale orange with dark stripes), Italian cranberry (with their bright pink shells) and Good Mother Stallard.

McCann says Good Mother Stallard are a particular favorite. “The plants are high-yield, and the beans are very popular,” she says. “They’re large like marbles with a hearty, creamy texture that makes a delicious broth.”

This year, McCann has forgone the farmers market in favor of launching her own bean club. Customers can sign up on her website (rusticoutlookfarm.com) to receive a box of several different varieties. Sign-ups close Dec. 1, and beans will be distributed a few weeks later. If all goes well, she hopes to expand and offer bean club members multiple distributions each year.

Even as Rustic Outlook expands, McCann encourages other farmers to grow more beans and even for customers to plant her beans in their own gardens. “I think there’s still plenty of room for more beans,” she says. On local farms and in local pantries.

Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA. To learn more about what local farms are growing and selling near you, visit buylocalfood.org.