THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508130337
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Coastal Journal
SOURCE: Mary Reid Barrow
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
Shelling beans is a family affair at Creekmore's Place at the Farmer's Market.
The other day, Elsie Creekmore, daughters Sharon Moseley and Pat Lewis, cousin Alice Harrison and grandson Stervon Johnson, were all dressed in colorful Creekmore's Place T-shirts and shelling beans behind the counter at Creekmore's Farmer's Market stall. Butterbeans were the bean of choice except for Lewis who was rolling black-eyed peas out of the pod.
With practiced fingers that make shelling beans look like an art, the Creekmore family smoothly and quickly split open the pods and used the right thumb to strip the beans down into their right hands. They didn't drop beans and peas into containers until there were more beans than a hand could hold.
Working this way, Elsie Creekmore and her helpers shell three to five bushels of butterbeans a day during the week and up to 10 bushels on a Saturday. A bushel of butterbeans will yield five to seven quarts of shelled beans, Creekmore said.
Creekmore, 75, is a Farmer's Market institution, the only remaining stall operator left from the original group that opened the Farmer's Market on Landstown Road a couple of decades ago. Wearing her navy blue Creekmore's Place cap and her T-shirt, designed by Moseley, Creekmore never looked up from the task at hand as she talked about butterbeans.
Now that butterbean shelling machines are prevalent, her stall is one of the few places left these days where you can buy clean, unbruised butterbeans shelled by hand. ``I wouldn't eat a bean shelled by a bean sheller,'' Creekmore said, laughing.
What's worse, she added, are the folks nowadays who don't even know what a butterbean is. ``Lima beans is all they know,'' she said.
``Some call butterbeans `baby limas,' '' Moseley chimed in. ``And we always called the big limas Fordhooks.''
Creekmore said folks will buy butterbeans once you tell them how to cook them, however. She advises fixing them the old fashioned way with a little meat, like salt pork, for flavoring.
After she shells and washes her beans, she puts the meat on to boil. ``After it boils, I put in my beans, salt, pepper and sugar,'' she said, ``and let 'em go for themselves 'til they get tender.''
That takes around 30 minutes, she added. Creekmore also loves to make succotash from her butterbeans, by also adding chopped tomatoes, potatoes and sometimes onion to the water. Then she cuts fresh corn off the cob, leaving part of the kernel behind so the corn is ``milky.'' She adds the corn and ``milk'' to the broth and lets the broth cook down until it's barely soupy.
``I just love succotash,'' Creekmore said. ``Being everything is fresh makes it extra good. Add a few okra in there and that will make it extra good, too!''
The only interruption to the bean fest occurred when customers arrived to buy a pint of butterbeans, a dozen ears of corn, a few tomatoes or one of the other good fruits and vegetables for which old Princess Anne County and the Farmer's Market is known.
One customer was Vernon South. He was buying some of Creekmore's butterbeans. His wife cooks butterbeans with meat for seasoning, like Creekmore does, but then she adds dumplings to the broth, South said.
Customers, like South, are gradually finding their way back to the Farmer's Market, said market assistant superintendent Richard Sawyer. Long term road construction on Landstown Road made it difficult for the public to negotiate their way into the market. But when construction finally was completed late last spring, the problems didn't end.
Now the market entrance off Landstown is reached via a feeder road on the right, which is easy to miss because the feeder road entrance is north of the market entrance.
``At first people would pass us by,'' Sawyer said. ``They're doing a little better now.''
If you keep a watch out for directional signs on Landstown Road, you shouldn't have any trouble. A visit is worth the effort.
New this year is Sharon's Bakery and almost new is the Virginia Country Music Museum, which is open mainly on weekends. All the old favorites are there too, like corn, figs, tomatoes, peppers, melons and, of course, Creekmore's hand shelled butterbeans.
P.S. SWEET SCENTS: The 18th Century Herb Garden is the topic of continuous family programming from 2 to 4 p.m Wednesday at the Francis Land House. Visitors can make a small sachet with dried herbs from the Land House herb garden. To find out more, call 340-1732.
THE HAMPTON ROADS WILDLIFE NETWORK would like to get a sense of how many organizations and individuals would like to attend a workshop this fall to learn how to clean up sea birds after an oil spill. If you are interested in volunteering, call Ann Miles, 486-5026, or Bob or Kathy Marchant, 482-7137. MEMO: What unusual nature have you seen this week? And what do you know about
Tidewater traditions and lore? Call me on INFOLINE, 640-5555. Enter
category 2290. Or, send a computer message to my Internet address:
mbarrow(AT)infi.net.
ILLUSTRATION: Photos by MARY REID BARROW
Elsie Creekmore, 75, is a bean-shelling institution at the Farmer's
Market. Her artful fingers leave the butterbeans clean and
unbruised.
by CNB