Franks & Beans Revisited

The perfect complements to tender beans: franks, bacon, lamb sausage, hot Italian sausage.
Credit: Adam Detour Over time, beans met sausage in every kind of variation, from soups to long, slow bakes—a pairing that reached its zenith (or nadir, depending on your perspective) in that cafeteria classic, franks ’n’ beans. We were inspired to revisit this combination after being introduced to Charley Baer, who grows heirloom beans on his 80-acre farm in southern Maine with the able help of four assistants: Jonathan Zoba, Nicholas Hanlon, Harvin Groft, and Jenna Darcy. Under the brand “Baer’s Best,” Charley sells old standbys like kidney, cannellini, and black turtle beans, as well as rare varieties like bumble­bee, money, calypso, and Boston Roman. Some of the farm’s oldest varieties, including yellow eye, Jacob’s cattle, and sulphur, date back to Colonial times. Charley discovered farming in the early 1980s, while visiting friends in central Maine who had apprenticed under a bean farmer. The farmer had taught them his trade, then sold them his equipment. Charley came to help on weekends, the farm grew, and one or two bean varieties became five, then 10 and 20. “You get your first tractor and it’s all downhill from there,” he says.