As the air cools off and those of us who are in the habit of cooking start thinking of stews and things we can bake, many older Mainers will be baking beans. There will come a time in the future (and not too far away, either) when baking beans will be just a memory.

Most of us who grew up with a garden in the back yard can recall the fun we had pulling the dried beans at the end of summer, piling them up on a tarp and threshing them. My father always let us kids do that chore, and then of course we’d have to pick up all the beans that fell out of the broken bean pods. Mom would spread them out on cookie sheets to dry and put them in the oven at a high-enough heat to “kill any germs.” After that, they’d go into jars or cans with lids, to await the Saturday night ritual all winter long.

It was this way for years. But time changes routines, and raising dry beans went the way of many other old-time practices. As families downsized, many of us started picking up a can of baked beans – and for a while that worked out OK. You had a choice of the old Downeast favorites canned by companies here in Maine: kidney, pea, yellow eye, soldier, Jacob’s cattle and navy beans. Then, the canning companies were sold and nowadays, it’s hard to find that choice. We’re offered barbecue, barbecue with onion, old-fashioned and other exotic varieties. When you look at the label to see what kind of beans these flavored offerings began with, it’s not a type we recognize.

In the grocery store where I shop, on the bottom shelf under this vast variety of canned beans, you can find the dry beans. They’re in little bags, usually with a couple of tiny pebbles to “make the weight.” Here one sees the old, familiar names, including Navy beans – good for soup.

Old habits are hard to break and the older you get, the more difficult it is to change routine. I still like baked beans and biscuits for Saturday night supper. But canned beans are a far cry from the beans slowly baked all day, filling the house with a sweet aroma and keeping the kitchen warm.

Having a little more time nowadays, I have the luxury of baking beans. I set out to do this one Friday night (first, soak the beans overnight). I had a bag of my favorite yellow eye beans, but I didn’t have any salt pork, a necessity to bake a pot of beans the old fashioned way. Imagine, I thought, having to buy salt pork!

Years ago, and it was decades now that I think about it, there was a large crock in the cellar that was filled with salt pork. Weighted down with something – I think it was a heavy plate – the chunks of pork were preserved in a salt brine. This crock of salt pork was the end result of feeding a pig all year. Everyone I knew in those days had pigs. But times – and people – change. Today, I’d expect any nearby neighbors to rant and rave about how inappropriate it was to raise pigs in the backyard.

In the old days, on Friday nights, a couple of cups of dry beans would be put to soak overnight in a kettle of water. When Saturday morning rolled around, one of us kids would go down cellar to get a piece of salt pork to put in the beans. The beans that were by now all wrinkled, would be drained of their water and dumped into a beanpot (a round brown crockery container). The piece of salt pork would be rinsed off and scored by cutting criss-cross across the top, and it would get pushed down into the beans. A little molasses and some salt and pepper would be added and a little water, and the lid put on. Into the oven it would go, and the temperature set low. A little water added now and then made sure there would be some bean juice to dip biscuits in.

The beans would bake all day. The aroma filled the house, and anyone wandering in to tell of the day’s activities would know what we were having for supper.

About an hour before supper time, my grandmother or mother would make a pan of biscuits (a cookie sheet full) without measuring the flour or anything, and the soft dough would be rolled out and biscuits cut out with a glass, which was occasionally dipped into flour. The biscuits would be golden on the top, thanks to a little shortening smoothed over them.

Top this all off with a dish of sliced cukes in vinegar or some cole slaw and homemade jam for the biscuits and it was an affirmation of Saturday night, as we had always known it. A special treat was that “streak of lean” in the pork, for it was tasty beyond compare! On Sunday morning, we’d start the day off with a few leftover beans and biscuits and sometimes some fried potatoes.

And some company far away has now tampered with a mainestay of Maine – baked beans. They can call them old-fashioned if they want to, but some of us know better.