Updated: 1/15/26

Sesame

We have been growing benne sesame since the beginning of our farm and love doing it. We start the sesame indoors with tomatoes and typically transplant after all the other May transplanting work is done. The sesame has been a passive crop for us, asking for no special care or maintenance. The plants tend to shut down flowering as the day light fades in the fall and usually begin drying out before a frost arrives. We cut the whole plants and bring them in to finish drying, after which, an easy shake onto a tarp makes collecting the seeds easy. We press the sesame for a very special oil and use it for baking and other recipes.

Beans

At one time we were growing well over a dozen different varieties of beans. Beans are really easy to get carried away with. But the logistics of storing and cleaning has dwidled that number down to 2 or 3 beans that we really liked. In fact, a few years back our two favorite beans crossed in the field and we’ve grown that cross out for a couple season to where it is mostly stabilized and now this is the primary bean that we grow. Its a bean that resembles a marfax bean but with the marking of a calypso, except the black is replaced with marfax’s beautiful sand brown. We also are still growing an appoloosa bean who tends to change colors and patterns at will every year, so who knows how much they still resemble their namesake’s appearance. Either way, the beans are one of our favorite winter food stores.

Sunflowers

Sunflower oil is our prefered oil seed crop for yield and ease of growth and processing the plant. We grow the mammoth variety. The heads are cut off when they start to yellow and are finished drying indoors. They are then threshed with a bicycle wheel and can be pressed without any additional cleaning or hulling. We don’t mess with sunflower seeds for eating because we haven’t put together a hulling device that made the work feel worth it. There’s always a lot to do.

Pepitas

Every couple of years we grow another crop of pepitas. Their fatty seeds are really delicious and are our choice for fatty seeds for eating because there is such little processing or cleaning involved. The special cultivars for pepitas are grown in the same manner as winter squash and when the fruit are matured, the tops are cut off and the insides are scooped out. They seeds are then cleaned for the squash guts and gently dried. It’s a fun crop to make pumpkin butter in the same way as peanut butter.

Peanuts

We’ve been growing the Carolina Runner peanut for a decade now and really enjoy it. There’s nothing like pulling up a plant for a harvest and seeing the nuts dangle beneath. We don’t do anything too special with the peanuts except snack on them and save more seeds. The seeds are started at same time as sesame and are usually a decent size when they are transplanted into the field. Our peanut crops have been a favorite of the wildlife so the more mature of a plant we can transplant, the better chance they’ll still be there in the weeks to come. We’ve tried direct sowing peanuts and it’s as if we are just feeding the wildlife as none ever make it, rarely even to sprout.