John Vance Leather Britches

Joan and her husband, Tom Vance, have been stewarding this bean variety since they received seed from Tom’s father, Mr. John Dolan Vance (1926-1987), soon after they married in the early 70s. Mr. Vance got his seed in the early 1960s from a fellow coal miner named Pastine in Bayard, West Virginia. Mr. Pastine got his seeds from his father, who brought them from Italy in the early 1900s. Mr. Vance began raising this variety because he wanted to dry them for “leather britches”. He would raise them to maturity, pick them before they dried, string them on a long piece of thread, and then hang them in the screen windows of his enclosed back porch until they dried to a leathery feel. Then he would bag them up and keep them in the freezer until needed during the winter. Joan donated this variety to SSE in 2021.