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leather britches noun Green beans dried in the pod by hanging over a fireplace or in the smokehouse or by being laid on trays or scaffolds in the sun, thereafter threaded with a needle and hung for consumption by being slowly boiled in water. [so called because when hung up to dry they resemble leather pants on a clothesline; DARE labels this term “chiefly South Midland, especially southern Appalachians”]

1913 Kephart Our Sthn High 292 Beans dried in the pod, then boiled “hull and all,” are called leather-breeches. 1939 Hall Coll (Hazel Creek NC) They'd dry their beans, yes. They'd dry leather britches beans they called it. I dry mine in the sun. My grandmother dried hers on a string, hung them up in the porch or around the fireplace and dried 'em. I still dry those leather britches beans. 1963 Watkins and Watkins Yesterday in Hills 49 We took a big sewing needle and stringbean pods on strings about a yard long and strung them on the porch until they was dry. “Then we pulled the beans, or leather breeches, off the strings and stored them in flour sacks. They was dry and brittle as shucks. Leather breeches had to soak for hours before they was cooked. Us children could smell the cooking leather britches as soon as we opened the front door when we come home from school, and we run for the big black pot and beans to eat between meals. Biled with a piece of sidemeat, the beans was good, but they always had a dry burned taste. 1978 Montgomery White Pine Coll III-2 Our beans, we would dry them. They called them leather britches, and you'd string them on your string till you got something like a yard long, then you'd hang them in the smokehouse or somewhere when it was warm weather, and they'd dry out. Then all you'd have to do in the winter if you took a notion for green beans, why you could go get your leather britches and put them in the water and soak them overnight and you'd just have a livelier spell of green beans than you ever had when it come out of the garden.