Freezing Green Beans in a few, simple steps

Save seeds from previous year.

Pole beans planted beneath green fencing on right side of photo.

Plant the seeds.

Wait.

These are purple pole beans.  Purple makes them easier to see.

Ends snapped off and broken in two.  The older, more fiberous ones are cut into one inch pieces.

Blanch for five minutes.  They turn green.

The blanching operation is the bottleneck.  The key to good throughput is to service the blanching operation first and then service the other operations in the five minutes the beans are blanching.

That means dumping the finished beans and water into a colander, returning the hot water back to the blanching pan.  Turning the heat back on.  Adding the new batch of beans to the blanching pan....before moving the blanched beans out of the colander and taking them to the next step...the cooling tray.

Spread out on a cookie sheet to drain excess water and to cool off.

Into freezer bags and into the freezer.  God willing, these will go into Minestrone soup this winter.