Hole Day.
Shorey, a retired forester who stands a tree-like six feet, six inches tall, has been active at the museum since it began in 1950. “I’ve been involved in forestry all my life. My father was in the lumbering business and it just seemed the thing to do
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While Shorey is in charge of the food, he’s not actually “supervising” the dinner crew. They all know their jobs and are doing them. Shorey’s wife, Christine, is busy running back and forth from the six coffeepots brewing over an open fire, filling empty coffee cups.
Ted Hanson, a retired game warden, is the official biscuit cook. He and his crew keep two breadboards covered with biscuit dough, while two other crew members place the dough in shiny, stainless steel trays and slide them into six reflector ovens placed around a huge hardwood bonfire.
Carrying paper plates and plastic utensils, the slightly soggy guests line up for a more-than-generous helping of yellow eye beans. As they receive their biscuits from one of the teenage girls serving the line, she greets them with a cheerful, “How are you today?” Other volunteers add cole slaw, hot dogs, gingerbread, and molasses cookies to the passing plates.
The crew includes members of the museum, volunteering neighbors, the Shoreys, and their son and daughter, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and their boyfriends and girlfriends.
“The kids are learning the art of cooking bean hole beans so they can take over some day,” Christine Shorey says.
With a line of faithful attendees, the question almost seems unnecessary: Is there really a difference between bean hole beans and regular baked beans? Absolutely, says Shorey. “Bean hole beans have more flavor because I use more pork to keep them moist.” When they’re underground, he says, you can’t keep watering them.
Shorey learned the art of cooking bean hole beans by assisting a previous cook and has been the museum’s bean chef for 10 years. “I sort of use my own recipe,” he says. “I don’t use as much pork as the old fellows used to. I use a quarter of a pound of pork to a quart of beans.” His wife says he does no other cooking.
Cooking beans in a hole in the ground may seem a little strange to those not from Maine or New England, but baked beans on a Saturday night, served with steamed brown bread cut with a string, were a favorite in many a Maine home. They are still popular at church suppers, along with potato salad, cole slaw, and either a piece of ham or red hot dogs. And they are still the star of the show at the museum’s Bean Hole Day.
Hurrying to find a dry place to eat, Avis Branum, from Oakfield, says she has been coming for years and loves the beans. Bill Jaunbral of Massachusetts has come for 20 summers, and Walter Rusak of New Jersey has been eating the bean dinner at Patten for a fruitful 45 years.
People feast leisurely, sitting at long tables under wooden roofing or blue tarps placed around the museum grounds, and visiting with old friends they hadn’t seen since last year. As the museum’s guests enjoy themselves, Shorey gives the lowdown on how cooks can try bean hole beans at home.
All that is really required, he says, is a hole and a fire, though many outdoor cooks line their holes with rocks, bricks, slate, or granite, or even a length of old logging chain in the hole to keep the heat. Here at Bean Day, Shorey placed tire rims in his bean holes, “mostly to keep the sides from falling in.” He is using 16 bean holes and pots this year, where in the past about 25 were used. He is now using larger pots to cut back on the number of bean holes he has to dig.
All told, Shorey used about a cord of hardwood for the fires. The pots of beans were placed about three feet into the ground on Friday night, covered with sand, and given from six to eight hours to cook. When they are dug up on Saturday, the covers are carefully brushed with a whisk broom and opened gently for a quick inspection before the pot is rushed to the serving line.
Shorey also explains the connection of beans to a lumbermen’s museum: Beans were ideal food for lumbermen who worked in the woods all winter and needed a high protein diet. The huge pots of beans were easy to keep, and on log drives, such as on the Penobscot and Saint John Rivers, “the cook and cookee would go down the river ahead of the loggers and cook beans in the ground, so there was a good hot meal waiting for them” after sloshing around in a cold river all day.
The guests at Bean Hole Day may not have realized it, but Donald Shorey did: By eating their bean hole beans with wet feet and damp clothes, they were tasting a bit of Maine lumbermen history.
Lumbermen's Bean Hole Beans
Serves 12
2 lbs. of yellow eye beans, soaked overnight
1 tsp. dry or prepared mustard
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 to 1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup water
1 large onion cut in half
1 lb. salt pork, cut into sections
Dig a hole two to three times the size of your bean pot. Using seasoned wood, light a fire and accumulate live coals until hole is 3/4 full. Parboil beans over the open fire until the skin peels away by blowing on a few beans on a spoon. Mix the mustard, molasses, salt, and water; add that and the onion to the beans and stir gently until contents are hot. If beans are not completely covered with water, add boiling water so they are covered. Cut each pork section partly through in a crisscross pattern and place pieces on top of the beans. Cover the beans and set to one side.
Shovel out the coals, leaving about 3 inches of live coals in the bottom of the hole. Set the bean pot in the hole on top of the 3-inch bed of coals. Shovel the rest of the coals around and on top of the pot. Cover the coals and pot with dirt and check for escaping steam, making sure none is leaking out. If steam is leaking out, cover area with more dirt. Leave in the ground for 8 hours or overnight.
