Help needed

It has been an unusually long absence from the web for me. It has been a profitable break with a lot of learning. I am updating my small holding series later this month and researching some new possibilities for a better blog format that will be a little easier to manage. I am also right in the midst of researching several different review papers and study guides for the training of my children on various subjects ranging from the differences between a Revolution and an Independence movement to Covenantal faithfulness in their own future child-rearing. Did I mention that my wife is having our 9th child in 5 weeks and I just returned from an impromptu trip to the flood-ravaged regions of West Virginia, harvested 55 pounds of potatoes, built a new poor man's chicken tractor, a few new rabbit hutches for the 17 kits (bunnies) that were born and am helping our little Millie whelp and care for her new 12 hog catching champion American Bulldog/Pit pups that were born a couple of days ago, steam cleaning the chair that she tried to have them in, and getting ready to can about a gazillion Amish Paste monster size tomatoes for the first time ever! Yeah, life here is just as smooth as peaches and cream!

Today what I need is help! We have a very good crop of various dry beans that are close to early production dates for harvest. Right now the Pinto beans are the closest at 63 days and have 60% yellow mottled pods with large seeds. Just right for getting ready to dry. The problem is that we have torrential rains moving through this past 4 days and no signs of it slowing for the next 10-15 days. After a season long drought we are thankful for the Florida of our youth to come back around and look forward to the effects that the rain will have on our Aquifer system, but it looks like the dry bean project is in dire straits. This morning I had the older two boys pick a good bit of the yellowing pods from the Pintos and am going to attempt drying them in the pods somewhere inside. I have never done dry beans before and am needing a little direction from some of you veterans. My primary questions are as follows:

• Can I pick selectively like my Roma's, or do I need to rip the whole plant up and sacrifice the smaller, younger pods?
• Is it safe and wise to pick now, in the middle of this rain, or should I just wait an extra couple of weeks and hope that the weather clears before all the beans are ruined?
• Is it better to dry this way in the pods, or should I shell them?

I am not so much interested in getting a harvest for consumption this year. Our main goal with the dry beans has been to plant the little that the Lord allowed us to purchase and harvest as much seed as possible for replanting a much larger crop next year. I am hoping that we will, at the very least, have about 5 times as many seeds for future gardening as what I bought this year. Is this a reasonable goal?

Any help from the more experienced will be much appreciated.