Why she looks the beans first
The don't-do-it in this video is opening the bag and pouring the beans straight into jars. Lynn tells the story herself: back before she learned to look her beans, she canned some that way, and when she opened a jar there was a big grub worm sitting right on top where it had come up during the cooking. Now she sorts every bean by hand, watching for rocks, grub worms, and bad ones.
The method is simple and slow. She sets out a bowl for the good ones and a bowl for the bad ones and works a handful at a time, flipping the rejects into the second bowl. What she throws out is anything with little tiny holes in it or part of it missing. When she is finished she holds up the pile of culls to show what would have gone in the jars if she had skipped the step, and says again not to do it the other way. The full job is on the video page.
One brine for the whole batch
Rather than salting jar by jar, Lynn mixes a brine in a food-grade bucket. For this batch it is four gallons of water to a half cup of salt for 21 jars, and she measures the water by filling a regular gallon milk jug four times. Once the salt goes in she works out that it comes to one teaspoon of salt per jar if you do the math, then stirs it and sets it aside so the salt dissolves while she works.
She also gives the bean numbers up front: it takes 10 pounds of dried beans to fill 21 jars. The beans in this video are Great Northerns, but she says the same canning recipe works with whatever your family likes, pinto beans, black beans, or field peas.
Washing, soaking, and filling the jars
After the sorting, the beans go to the sink. Lynn fills a dish pan, pours the beans in, and rubs them together to wash them, and she points out how cloudy the water gets and how bad ones she missed start floating to the top. Then she lets them soak for about an hour so the floaters come up. When the hour is up she skims off the three or four floaters she finds and rinses the beans.
Filling gets its own trick. Because soaked beans swell, she measures with a one cup measuring cup and then a quarter cup behind it, which she says still equals one cup of dried beans per jar. Into each jar goes a thick-cut, two-inch piece of bacon to season it, and she is clear that one piece per jar is all it takes, with another good stir of the brine before she starts pouring.
The brine goes in next. She fills each jar and says to leave an inch of headspace, going to that top little edge of the rim. Then she wipes the top of every jar with a little vinegar on a paper towel and checks each one for chips while she is at it, looking for chips or cracks before the boiled lids go on and the rims are tightened finger tight.
In the pressure canner
Lynn is on her last canner when she stops to show how much water goes in each one: one whole number 10 can of water plus half of another, so a can and a half, because dried beans take 90 minutes. She is emphatic about it, saying beans are not like doing peaches or squash and you never want the canner to run out of water over that long a process. She also adds a splash of vinegar to the canner water, which she says keeps the jars pretty and clear and easier to clean up afterward.
The weight she uses comes from where she lives. She explains that the little weights that come with the canner go by elevation: five pounds at 500 feet or below, the 10 pound weight for them at 800 and something above sea level, and the third weight for 15 pounds at a thousand or above. She starts the stove on medium, and once the jigglers start jiggling she turns the canners down to low for the 90 minutes. When the timer goes off she cuts the canners off and lets them sit outside until the pressure comes all the way down before she opens them.
What she gets out of it
The batch comes in the house as 21 jars for the winter, for when you get home from work and want supper on the table fast. While she is talking she catches a lid popping on camera, which she says is the sound you want, and she describes the payoff as opening a jar and making cornbread or some fried pork chops to go with it. If something in the video is not clear you can Ask Lynn.
For canning and preserving, follow Lynn's video together with current tested guidance from your national or state extension service.