It can be done outside in the sun, like on one of the beautiful late-autumn days we've been experiencing.
Or at the dining table having a chat with a willing pod-popping partner.
In front of the TV is an option. Though I find this distracting as I don't get to concentrate fully on the visual and tactile pleasure of squeezing each bean from its fibrous sheath.
My podding perch of choice has been the wicker chair in my office that sits at my old 1950s government-issue wooden desk. While, of course, listening to music.
In fact, as an opportunity for music listening, podding beans ranks up there with doing dishes and driving the car.
The difference is that compared with those two settings, my music to accompany podding can be less loud, less rock 'n' roll.
When you're podding beans, you can go finger-picking acoustic Delta Blues. Or whimsical Aldous Harding.
Some Miles Davis trumpet can fill the spaces in your relaxed mind as you slowly work through a basket of slightly dried yellow and brown bean pods.
After harvesting the beans, I spread them out on metal trays and baskets in front of a north-facing window to dry out. You want the bean to be hard inside, so it pings when you squeeze it into the bowl.
And as your bowl fills, you get a satisfying tinkling rattle as your podded bean hits the other beans.
No doubt, a few generations past, podding beans and other repetitive home provisioning tasks would have been done with more frequency than now.
That's a pity because there's something therapeutic about performing a necessary task that requires not too much brain-power or physical effort. Podding beans sit in the zone between work and relaxation, alone or in company.
I'm sure such activities used to unite the young and the old in some long-ago peasant days in another part of the world.
I can picture an old woman sitting near a fire telling weird folktales to grandchildren while podding baskets of beans to store for winter. As the parents get on with other household tasks or sneak away for time alone together.
In addition to these daydreaming thoughts about olden day bean podding, I've been contemplating beans for another reason.
As my proud harvest of butter beans was drying, I was at Reduced To Clear in town and spotted five cans of Craig's Red Kidney Beans for $5.
I bought them. More beans, the merrier. I'll find ways to use them.
They're good for you in every way. I don't think you can eat too many beans, even if the old joke about increased flatulence is true.
I kept coming back in my mind to how incredible it is that you can buy so many beans so cheaply, packaged and preserved in a can.
All up, the butter beans I harvested fit in a small container and weigh 600 grams. Each tin of red beans, brine drained away, contains around 280 grams of beans.
My dried beans will bulk up substantially when soaked in water before cooking, but still, growing your own beans seems hardly worth it as a money-saving endeavour. Not right now, at least.
Yet as much as it's nice to find a food bargain, my butter beans have done more for my peace of mind.
I've left the nearly full container on the kitchen bench. Every once in a while, I have the desire to dip my hand into it and rummage the beans about, letting them fall through my fingers with a gratifying sound. These are my beans. I grew them. Craig's beans have got nothing on these boys.
