Well before the season heralded itself with its cold blasts from the North Pole, loads of green and French beans were bought.The whole family sat around the kitchen table cleaning the vegies. These long French beans were a surly type of beans, sometimes they were damaged during growing and showed light brown spots or scratches. ‘Not to worry’ Mum would say, ‘only take out the soft and rotten ones’. A lot had tough stringy ‘threads’ along side, which were pulled off, starting by breaking the pointy end of the bean and doing the same at the other end. The whole lot finished up under the tap to be washed before we continue with the more exiting part of the programme. Those long beans had to be cut and for this we were in possession of the latest technology, a glorious deep red cast-iron machine with a horizontal cutter, a swinging handle and two spouts where we pushed the beans into and cut into thin slices. Pfff…after a few hours your arm was just about to fall off. Now and then we put two beans in one hole by accident and the thing got stuck, that gave us a well-deserved break. It was quite a job, there were heaps and heaps of cut beans, all to be stored in large glazed earthenware pots, about a metre tall. The sliced beans were salted, many hands full, so they wouldn’t perish. The pots were then covered with a white cotton cloth and two half-moon shaped planks, topped off and compressed with a large grey boulder. These barrel-shaped pots then were carried down the wooden steps into the cellar, which was a hell of a slog because of the weight.