The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.38: Carol Miles on Commercial Dry Bean Production on Small-Scale Farms

Episode Date: February 25, 2015

Are niche market dry beans a good bet for your small-scale farm? This episode, WSU Farming Extension Specialist Carol Miles returns to the podcast to talk about her vast knowledge of organic dry bean production, which has been a regular focus of her research. We discuss scale-appropriate tools, the best varieties to grow, and other considerations.  Miles' WSU profile page WSU Resources for Niche Market Dry Bean Production WSU dry bean variety information

There's a few farms around here that have root washers that they've bought and I went around and kind of took notes and found that it was kind of just a I mean it's a very basic machine if you get right down to it. That's Matt Lougheed of Food of the Sun Farm in Costin BC. Matt recently got on the phone with me to talk about the root washer he made to wash his farm's various root veggies. It's essentially a barrel powered by a treadmill motor, and you can hear him talk about it and see some photos and a video at The Ruminant right now. Go to theruminant.ca slash ideas to find the post about Matt's root washer. The Ruminant is a podcast and blog devoted to sharing good ideas with farmers and

gardeners. Today on the podcast, I talked to Washington State University Extension Specialist Carol Miles about small-scale commercial dry bean production. All right, let's get started. I'll talk to you again at the end of the podcast. I'm Carol Miles. I'm a professor in the Department of Horticulture at Washington State University. I'm based in Mount Vernon at the Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center. I'm a vegetable specialist. I've been working here in Western Washington for just over 20 years now with a focus on alternative crops, new crops, production systems that are suited for the west side of the state. Carol Miles, thanks a lot for coming on the Ruminant Podcast.

Thank you so much for inviting me. Carol, I'm thrilled to have you back on the podcast after a great episode, a great interview that you gave me on grafting last year. And this time, I thought we could talk about dry bean production, since as I understand, you've done some research in that area. Yeah, thanks. I've been working on dry beans here in western Washington for about 15 years now, so done a variety trials mostly, looking at varieties that are well suited to the production climate that we have here, which is somewhat unique in the, certainly in North America, I believe. And looking at small scale equipment needs that a small scale grower would have to grow dry beans, you know, beyond just a garden row.

So I think, I think we could just briefly talk about, about scale just to kind of set the parameters here, Carol. When you say small scale, what do you mean? Is there a certain scale you need to have to consider? I mean, I'm most interested in talking to you about commercial dry bean production and commercial on some level anyway, is there a certain scale that you need to have to be able to do that? Or can you really do it in a really tiny plot? I think bringing this discussion to the point where it needs to be, which is what equipment do you have,

and how efficient can you be at growing dry beans at any level of area? So the reality, in my view, is that as you get bigger, as with any crop, the more equipment you have, the different equipment you have, is going to make the job that much easier for you. So with dry beans, there's planting, and I think planting is relatively simple with very small scale equipment. You can do it with a push planter. And, you know, the question becomes, you know, how many rows can you walk up and down over what amount of time? And, you know, certainly if you have a tractor planterter you could for sure do a lot more area

in the in the same amount of time weed control is going to be the next thing you're going to have to consider we do our weed control we're certified organic i should mention that with our dry meat bean production so our weed control is all with cultivators so we use equipment we have a tractor and we set up implements an implement bar on the back of the tractor to do all of our weed control. You can certainly do that by hand, but once again, it comes down to how many row feet can you walk up and down with a wheel hoe or a hoe to do that kind of work. And then the big issue is going to be harvesting and then threshing and cleaning the beans. So I think that probably if you're

doing harvesting by hand, I think half an acre is manageable, but, you know, it's going to take quite a bit of time to do that. If you're, certainly if you're one person, you know, pulling plants and stripping pods, it's just a lot of work. So then the question is going to be, do you have equipment? Do you have access to equipment that's going to enable you to do that mechanically? So I think the question of scale with a crop like dry beans, which is very easy to do mechanically for planting, weed control, and harvest, threshing and cleaning, the equipment exists for all of those steps. I think a grower is going to be limited in the amount of area they grow based on the equipment that they're going to have access to.

Right. Okay. So I want to, I think what I'll do is in just a moment, I'm going to ask you to, we'll talk about what a half acre scale of dry bean production might, what a person growing on that amount of land might use throughout that whole process versus someone with say five acres. But first, I just want to briefly ask you, because I know you've looked at this, for the small scale farmer or grower, why dry beans? What are some of the benefits of choosing to add dry beans to whatever else they're growing and selling?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think it's really a point that, you know, it's one of those primary points you have to consider as a grower, why dry beans? And to me, you know, the advantages are really kind of simple and straightforward. One, it's a relatively easy crop to grow. So as long as you can figure out the harvesting end of it, and that's really just a labor or equipment issue. But in terms of growing a crop, when I think of vegetables in general,

it doesn't get any easier than growing a dry bean crop. So it tends to be relatively pest-free as long as you're doing all your management well. So you've got the ease of production. It's a low input crop. It doesn't need a lot of fertilizer. It doesn't need a lot of pesticides in general because it just doesn't have a lot of problems that are going to occur with it. And then in terms of its marketability, there's no other crop that I can think of, certainly in the vegetable world, that has the storability of a dry bean. So once you get that dry bean out of the field, once you get it cleaned, you get it into your bags, your sacks, you know, it goes into a storage room and it can be there for the next year with no negative impact on quality or yield. And,

you know, you've got a product that you can again put in your your csa box you can take to your farmer's market you can sell to your restaurant with no added effort so you know what and what about what about the demand side carol like i just i wonder not having ever really focused on dry beans and appreciating the the phenomenal variety out there and some of the flavor that can be achieved with locally grown beans. But what is, I mean, I know in your research, you've at least looked at the demand side and what demand is like in those realms like chefs and farmer's market and correspondingly what kind of prices farmers can expect per pound

when they're selling. If you assume they've chosen really flavorful varieties, you know, can you talk about demand? Sure, I can talk about it in the, you know, in the simple way that we've approached it. I haven't done, you know, full out research studies. I've asked farmers what their experiences are. And so I have that, you know, anecdotal information. In terms of prices, what we've done is we've just gone to some farmers markets and retail outlets. And we, you know, we see what prices are on the bean product, the beans, excuse me, coming from our area. So let me talk about prices first. And then I'll talk about

the different types of beans that there's demand for. So what we've seen in prices is we've seen farmers get anywhere from $4 to $14 a pound for their dry beans here in western Washington. So I think that the market, the price opportunity there is very good in general. I think the important thing, and this gets to the varieties, good in general. I think the important thing, and this gets to the varieties, the important thing is that, you know, as a farmer selling a local food product, you're not going to compete against a product that you can buy at a grocery store for a dollar a pound. So you really have to look at, you know, what bean is going to differentiate you from something that anybody can get at a grocery store for, you know, a fraction of the cost they would get it from you. So there's a very high demand in general for pinto beans.

We find that here in western Washington, certainly on the east side of the state. Pintos are probably the highest demand type of dry bean that there is. But I question whether or not you're going to get the price that you're going to need to be able to justify growing that crop in your system here in our area. So that's an example of a type of dry bean that's probably the highest demand dry bean, but also it comes at the lowest cost. I think that our growers need to focus on dry beans that are not very widely available. They have different characteristics that might bring a customer in, and therefore you can ask a higher price. So in general, what I suggest to growers is to look at colored pattern beans.

So, you know, there are black and whites. There are speckled, they're soldiers, there's just all different types of varieties of beans that I think are very attractive. They certainly attract the customer. Local heirlooms. So here in Northwest Washington, our current work has been focusing on collecting heirloom varieties from our region here. So we have beans that have been grown here for as long as 120 years by farm families. And we're looking at the productivity of those beans and the demand in the market for those types of beans where they come with a story, right? They come with a heritage that any variety would have for its area.

So that tends to add value in the marketplace. And I have to assume that, I mean, my biggest concern as a grower who's considering putting about a quarter acre in dry beans this year is just finding the demand at least at the eater level, at the consumer level, just because, in my opinion, beans aren't, they're not really common in kitchens in terms of cooking with dry beans, right? So I'm wondering if you agree with that or if you've seen otherwise. And I guess also just whether it seems to me that if I'm going to try it, I should be aiming for my chef customers who probably will appreciate some of these lesser known varieties and flavors a little more.

Yeah. So I think if you approach cooking it immediately for the next, you know, within the next six months, that bean has, and this is anecdotal information, we haven't measured this, and it would take, you know, a pretty good food science program to measure this, but anecdotally what everybody tells me, and certainly we experience this as well in my program when we eat those beans. That freshly harvested dry bean has a creamy texture to it that really gives a special, you know, it carries a different flavor or a different texture with it into the recipe that you're going to use it with. So a cassoulet, a chili, a soup, you know, whatever those end products are.

a soup, you know, whatever those end products are, when you use a freshly harvested dry bean, it just has a different nuance to it than when you use a store-bought dry bean, which can be stored for, you know, up to three years most commonly. So that's where I think that you get to start to explore on your own. You know, you start to taste your dry beans, get a better sense of, you know, well, how creamy are they? What's the texture of these different varieties when they're used in these different recipes? There's that aspect of, you know, understanding what you're growing and your time to harvest influence on your end product. I would also say that the opportunity we have as vegetable growers and promoters of vegetable consumption is really letting our customers know about the health attributes of eating dry beans.

And there's enormous benefit to eating dry beans in the diet. I mean, the diets that are promoted here in North America, they include up to three cups of dry beans a week. You know, when you look at what the dieticians recommend for a healthy diet. And we're not coming anywhere near that in terms of what the, you know, the average North American, what the, you know, the weekly diet for the most part probably doesn't include dry beans at all for the most part. You doesn't include dry beans at all, for the most part. Right. You look at the health attributes of eating dry beans.

You have heart disease, so dry beans with the high fiber content of dry beans. They're a healthy protein, so they don't bring the fats, the LDLs, HDLs. They just don't have those constituents. So they're very healthy protein to add to the diet. The fiber attributes, they basically help control heart disease. Diabetes, they help control diabetes too. So obviously in combination with a healthy lifestyle in general, diabeens play a very important role in a

healthy diet. And I think we need to be using that information as marketers when you're. To, to promote them. Yeah. Um, that's a good point, Carol. And now I want to get to the production side, but I just have a few kind of random one-off questions for you. Cause I think you'll probably be able to answer them to some degree anyway. If I'm a grower who's going to put a quarter acre in beans and I want to grow five different beautiful and tasty kinds of beans and I intend to save the seed and I'm essentially growing them in the same field, do I need to, can I save the seed and like how robust are different bean varieties against cross-pollination if I intend to save the seed? Yeah, so beans almost rarely ever out-cross.

So beans are a self-pollinated crop. The out-crossing is very, very low. So if you were to separate your varieties by even 10 feet, that's probably adequate to prevent any cross-pollination. So you're able to save all your seed from your own field. If you have any question about that, you know, you might want to save the center part of your field and just, you know, so if you have a continuous bean planting, maybe you go and harvest the center for seed and you just, you know,

harvest all the borders for your product that you're marketing for food sales. Right. Okay. There's really no field separation needed at all for beans for seed saving. Okay. So next question, can a grower look upon a quarter acre or whatever amount, whatever field size in beans as a source of nitrogen fixation? Or is that wishful thinking in terms of culinary beans ability to fix nitrogen into the soil? Well beans are pretty low nitrogen fixers so in general you know the amount of nitrogen you're going

to get following a crop of beans is about 40 pounds of nitrogen per acre. The big thing to remember about nitrogen and growing a crop for nitrogen there's a big difference between growing a legume crop as a cover crop for nitrogen versus growing a vegetable crop and then getting a nitrogen return. And the difference is for a cover crop, you're tilling all the plant material back into the field. For a vegetable crop like dry beans, you're removing the beans. And there's a lot of nitrogen in those beans. And you're, you're removing the beans. And there's a lot of nitrogen in those beans.

And you're taking that out of the field. So that's where you get, you know, the big differences in your nitrogen return from a cover crop versus a vegetable crop. It sounds like a grower shouldn't see this as a, you know, in terms of fertility regeneration, they shouldn't think, oh, well, I'm going to put in this crop of culinary beans, harvest the whole thing, and at the same time, I've just done wonderful things for the field, just because there's really not anywhere near the returns when you're doing that. No, you're not going to get the big nitrogen returns. The added benefits, however, is that dry beans tend to be looking at a diversified vegetable system. Dry beans tend to give you a break in a lot of the diseases

that are soil-borne diseases that are going to impact your other vegetable crops. Dry beans tend not to be susceptible to diseases like verticillium wilt, for example, that are going to, you know, affect your other crops. So they do give you a break in the pest cycle. They don't tend to be susceptible to the insect pests as well, so you don't necessarily get a buildup of that in those fields where you're growing dry beans. I think to me, to look at a diversified farm growing dry beans, it's the diversification aspect and the value of that diversification in terms of you're not adding to your problems. Right. Okay, that's a good point.

And the last question before we talk about production, I've thought about, because I putting in about, well, somewhere between a quarter and a half acre this year. Am I, is there any approach I could take where I could reliably be, um, let's say grazing the bean plants, um, kind of spot picking fresh beans for market? Like, like, so if I have just, just, just for simplicity, assume a quarter acre in one kind of bean, are there certain varieties that, that would allow you to pick just, just to, to, to spot pick fresh beans as needed? Um, but, but ultimately, uh, ultimately leave most of the crop for dry bean production? Yeah. If you're looking at a fresh shell bean, then the most common type of bean that's grown as a fresh shell is a cranberry. So that's a really good example of one particular type of bean that's really well suited to fresh

shell harvest as well as a dry bean harvest. And at the dry bean stage, it carries a lot of, it tends to, you know, have a very high value. So that's probably the best example I can think of. Well, the other one is going to be a white bean. So like a cannellini or even a white kidney. That bean tends to also have a market demand at the fresh shell stage, and then also a higher value at the dry bean stage. The thing to know about the white beans in general is that they're a little bit more tricky to grow well. So they tend to be a little bit more temperamental for emergence, for stand establishment, and the yield tends to be a little bit lower just overall compared to most other

dry beans but in terms of value their value tends to be probably on the higher end so how about though i was even thinking i was not thinking wondering about actually like um like snap bean production like being able to harvest them at a really uh like an immature stage for fresh eating of the pods is that or, or are those just different varieties and that's not advisable, I suppose, if you're growing dry bean varieties? Yeah, snap beans are, you know, they've been bred and developed to be stringless.

That's what gives that pod that, you know, that's what gives it the edible pod is the fact that the strings have been bred out of them. There are some dry beans varieties, and we did this work, goodness, 10, 12 years ago, I can't remember, where we evaluated dry bean varieties at the green bean stage to see if there were dry beans that had an edible green pod. And there are a couple of out there that will probably be okay. But reality is they could never compete against a snap bean variety because the green beans have just been selected specifically to have those high pod qualities

that there's no effort put into dry bean at all. Okay, well, that makes sense. I'm not super surprised to hear to hear you say that so okay look i i i'd like to finish off the conversation if we if we could carol with just talking about um about the production so so i'm going to say that that based on what you earlier you said earlier i agree with you that i think most anyone serious about doing some commercial beans is not going to be uh challenged by the planting the the weeding the irrigation and of of the beans but i do think that a lot of us considering it are are challenged or intimidated by the harvest threshing and cleaning of the beans in terms of being able to do it efficiently

so so i'm just wondering if we won't i think we'll just skip over the first phases and just talk about it from harvest onward and i'd like to contrast this is a bit artificial but i'd like to contrast a quarter acre of dry beans versus say three acres so that we could talk about you know the different equipment that you would recommend or different approaches you'd recommend at those two different scales so does does that can we do that can we start by talking about how you would approach the harvest and processing on a quarter acre bean field yeah absolutely all right so when you start looking at dry beans for harvest,

what you need to do is you need to start looking at, you know, the seed moisture. So when that field is going to be ready for harvest and then how, what the different equipment opportunities are for you to then, you know, get those beans out of the field, basically. Starting at the quarter acre, what you can do is, my advice in general is that, you know, there are stationary threshers that you can use. I guess I'm beyond the stage of, I don't recommend the bag and the stick anymore. I know a lot of people, you know, they're still using the, you know, the very, what, mechanical way of threshing beans. You can beat them with a stick.

I know people still do that, but I guess I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about equipment. Is that all right? No, that's great. I'm looking for what you think is feasible at both scales because the larger scale is going to be able to justify more expensive equipment. But if you think, if you could talk about what's feasible for a quarter acre production and it involves equipment, then great. Okay. So what we've done is because I recognize this as, as far as I'm concerned,

the harvesting threshing of dry beans and the cleaning is the primary barrier to production for a small-scale grower of any level until you get to a certain point where it's all going to be mechanized and there's all that equipment available and you can afford to buy it. So until you get to that point, that process, the harvesting, threshing, cleaning, that process is the barrier to production. That's my view of of dry beans so what we did in my program is we built a thresher it's a small scale thresher was actually a design that was on the UC Davis website we took that design and we adjusted it for dry beans and we've been working with it for 14 years and that design what, what it is, is it's a chipper, a garden chipper mulcher, and we have adjusted it to turn it into a bean thresher. And that design is up on my website. It's not a very high-tech approach to

equipment, but I find that it's very effective. It works really well, and up to a quarter acre of dry beans, probably even an acre, it works just fine. So there, in order to use, that would be a stationary thresher. So in order to use a stationary thresher, what you need to do is you need to be able to feed the plant material into it. So for us, what we do is we just pull the whole plant out and we just feed the whole plant into the thresher. And the whole plant gets chopped and, you know, goes through the equipment, and then you're sorting out the plant debris.

That just gets dumped immediately from the pods and the smaller debris that's all going to be in the beans and the smaller debris that's all going to kind of settle to the bottom, and then we move that to our cleaner. So there's two steps to the way that we approach dry bean harvesting and cleaning, is the threshing and then the cleaner. And I think that's probably good enough. I think it's effective enough for most people, probably up to about an acre of dry beans. Assuming you have the labor to, you know, harvest your beans by hand, feed it in, and just, you know, do that process. So, you know, certainly one to four people can

manage that, I think, pretty well. The key to that is getting your dry beans dry enough in the field so that you can thresh them. And that's actually a pretty important step. Here in western Washington, during dry bean harvest, you know, we're talking mid-September onwards, we're back into rainy season. So we have morning dew, we have rain, and actually having a dry enough crop to do a stationary thresher is our biggest challenge here. East of the mountains, either in the U.S. or in Canada, where you've got drier weather in September, or maybe you're harvesting your beans earlier, that's not an issue. So getting the beans dry enough for harvesting is just not something you really have to think about.

But here on the west side, drying and threshing, you know, those are considerations that go hand in hand. But then you can, I mean, one can harvest and then further dry them out in storage on the plants, right? Yep. But the thing is, what we do, so a couple approaches here. Again, we're in northwest Washington. It's pretty humid going into dry bean harvest period. So what we do is we harvest our dry beans. We dry the whole plants for a couple of days. Depending on how warm and dry the weather

is, you can dry them on a bench in a tunnel, anything to just get that moisture off so that they're dry enough to go through the thresher. If the plant material is too dry going into the thresher, the stems, they bind up the thresher bars. They just, you know, the system doesn't work. The plant material has to be dry enough that it breaks as opposed to binds. So that's going to be true for however you thresh your plant material. Okay, so before we move on to a slightly larger scale, so you've got this design on your website for modifying a chipper to make it into a thresher, and I'll put the link for that up with the show notes when I post this episode. But what about cleaning? I guess, would you recommend just

some sort of winnowing setup with a big fan and that's the way you can clean when you're dealing with about a quarter acre worth of beans? Or is there an even more efficient way? Yeah. So basically, winnowing is indeed just, you know, either fan or wind. I mean, you know, basically, you're just going to blow off the debris. So, again, what we did is we built a bean cleaner, and the designs for that are also up on my website. And we built our design. It's fashioned off of the old seedway, which a grower gave to me. He found it in his barn.

It was about 100 years old. And we just looked at how that worked, and we just built a unit that essentially uses gravity. You just have to balance gravity with the strength of the fan that you're blowing through the equipment such that the bean drops to the bottom and all the plant debris blows off. And, you know, it's a pretty simple thing to build. You can just as easily take a screen and hold it up to a box fan. So we started with a compost screen, you know, with the dry beans and all the debris in the compost screen

and held it up to a box fan and you just, you know, you get close enough such that the debris falls off or blows off and the beans stay in the screen. and the beans stay in the screen. So it can be something as simple as a box fan in a screen or a seed cleaner where the, you know, it's a closed system where the fan is blowing through the beans as the beans drop down a chute, which is really all the bean cleaning equipment is. Okay.

So how about when you, I mean, what's the next, like, can we talk about a slightly larger operation? What kind of, what, what kind of options reveal themselves once you achieve certain economies of scale and can justify the purchase? You know, what, what, what else is, is available? Yeah. So the next easy step up is basically a small combine, and I'm going to say an older combine. So a grain combine will work on beans, and you just need to have the right heads, and I apologize because this is where I'm out of my area of expertise.

I have somebody else. We collaborate with the grain program here at the Mount Vernon Research Center, and they're using their combine to harvest our dry beans. So what we've learned, and we have a couple of growers growing dry beans here in the Skagit Valley, and they use their combine to harvest their dry beans. So they're using their grain combine to harvest their dry beans. And what we've learned with that is that all works just fine as long as the plant is dry enough at the time of harvest. So again, you know, you don't want it too dry because otherwise the beans

will split when they go through that combine, and you don't want it too wet because, as I said, otherwise the plant material, you know, binds up the equipment. So there's just a window there that you want, And that's about, I think what we figured here is about 18% moisture on the bean will make it dry enough that you can combine it. 12% is what you want for storage, 12% dryness on the bean for storage, long-term storage. But about 18% is what you want it field dry for combining and for threshing for that. Do you have any sense how cheaply one could obtain a used combine? I mean, that's still got to be a pretty big purchase. Yeah, I honestly don't know. It's not something

I've looked for. So I think it's really a matter of, you know, what's available in your area. I think that there's, from my understanding and talking to growers, there's a lot of old used equipment out there. It doesn't have to be anything new. It doesn't have to be anything, you know, fancy. So it's just a matter of how adept are you perhaps as a grower, you know, getting an older piece of equipment and making it work in dry beans. And I'm sorry, that's something again that, you know, it's kind of out of my area. Oh, I'm sorry, that's something, again, that, you know, is kind of out of my area. Oh, no, no, that's okay.

I just thought I'd ask. But I know several growers who have done that. So over the last few years, I've seen several growers here who have old wheat combines, and they've adjusted them to work on beans. Okay. Well, I think that covers it for this conversation, Carol. Before we wrap up, I want to mention that there's also another document located on the

Washington State University Extension site called Dry Bean Varieties for Niche Markets in the USA. And this is based on a lot of research that you folks have done. And it's just a wonderful catalog of many different bean varieties to consider with some important information like days to maturity, yield per 10 foot row and stuff like that. So I'll make sure that link gets up on my website as well. But before we go, is there anything else you want to say about your work or the Washington State University Extension site, which is a wonderful site? Yeah, thank you. So that's my website, I think, that you're referring to.

It's my program website. And I will say that we are just in the process of publishing a new guide to commercial dry bean production for western Washington, which I think will probably be of interest to growers small-scale growers anywhere so you know east of the mountains versus west of the mountains I that's it's with the editor right now so hopefully that will be available through our website by this summer that's certainly our hope so that is our new publication coming out. I know that we also have information on dry bean curriculum. So we're working with schools to focus on dry beans in their teaching efforts with fourth graders and tying that in with recipes that are being offered through cafeterias that are focused on beans

for the health promotion reasons that I mentioned earlier. So that information is also all on my website. Sure. Well, I'll certainly include links to your site and to some of these specific pages you're talking about. Carol Miles, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. I've really enjoyed talking to you, and I hope this will help people try and take on some dry bean production in the future. Well, again, thank you so much for having me, and I really appreciate the opportunity to let people know about our work.

So thank you so much. So as I record this, I am just about to leave on a two-week trip to attend two different farming conferences, one called Moses Organic in Wisconsin and one called Permaculture Voices in San Diego, which is why the intro and outro are going to be a little short this week, and I'm sure some of you are thrilled about that. Anyway, I really hope that I'm going to be able to record lots of cool stuff at these conferences and come up with lots of interesting episodes for you in future. Next week, I will have an episode up, but since it'll be on the road it'll be another truncated intro and outro and i look forward to bringing more content to you soon check out the ruminant.ca for all kinds of other interesting stuff for farmers and gardeners including that

recent post at the ruminant.ca slash ideas, where Matt Lohied talks about the inexpensive root washer that he built. Thanks, everybody. Have a great week. Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry. We could be happy with life in the country with salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking, some real soul searching, and here's my final resolve. I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong. So we'll run right out into the wilds and graces.

We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees And live life like it was meant to be Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.