A mountain man in search of a wife must consider many factors and a good work ethic is high on the list. Historically, life on the hardscrabble mountain farm was never easy and having a spouse who would pull her share of the load was invaluable.

This week I had the sad opportunity to attend a neighbor’s funeral and her husband told me, “I found her in the bean field. I just went to pickin’ beans with her.”

Now, this may not sound like a fairy tale beginning to you – and Hollywood will certainly pass on producing any love stories with that opening. However, I’ve heard many young men advised to look in the fields for a wife. It was sound advice and served that boy well. After a courtship that started over a bushel of beans, she worked alongside him for 62 years, raising vegetables and children, enduring hard times and enjoying the good ones.

We’ve talked a lot here about the green bean industry and the impact it had on Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau. There are surely more stories to write. In the 1950’s and ‘60’s, this cash crop provided summer work for men, women and children alike. For many years, my own grandfather ‘hauled’ bean pickers – that means that he would give them a ride on the back of his truck to the field. People have told me this, still appreciating the opportunity he gave them to earn a few dollars.

I will confess to you that when I was put in the field as a child – staring down an endless row of green sprigs that started out the morning soaked in dew and ended in scorching heat – I thought it was absolute child abuse. Years later when my sister and I worked in the same office, our supervisor asked what it was from my upbringing that gave us such a good work ethic – I told her we were taught to work from our earliest childhood. My mother thought that was the greatest compliment she could get.