Picking and Shelling Peas

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She is like the merchant's ships, she bringeth her food from afar
• With her hands she planteth a vineyard

A couple of weeks ago I showed ya'll my parent's garden. Then last week, I had a post on my food blog about how to put up peas for the freezer--blanching, shocking, bagging, the whole nine yards. 

This week, I want to show you the in-between. How to go from this...

...to this!

You start by picking the purple and turning-purple peas....this is my mom showing off her bucket.  (As I mentioned in my post on getting them ready for the freezer, she has threatened me if I show her face.)

Daddy always keeps a big tub at the end of the row to dump your bucket into.  When it gets filled, he just brings another tub.

Once all of the peas are picked, the next step is double washing of the peas still in the pods.  My folks have a double sink installed in their garden shed just for the purpose of washing vegetables. 

Sometimes Mom likes to speed up the process by using the garden hose to fill the dishpans up faster.

First one side, then the other.

The peas get swished around in one pan of water...

...then again on the second side.  It gets off the dirt, bugs, dried blooms, etc, and makes for a cleaner process once they're shelled.

In the olden days, when I was a girl, I can remember sitting outside under the trees, shelling peas by hand with my mother, grandmother, and anybody and everybody they could press into service.  Your fingers turn purple and your thumb gets sore from using your thumbnail to pierce the shell (pod) and start it separating.  It was a long, drawn out process when you garden on the scale my parents and grandparents have always done. 

These days, though, my mom and dad use a pea sheller.  I can't remember when they first got this, but I know it;s probably close to 25 years old.  The motor turns a belt attached to rollers that kind of "squish" the peas out of the hulls.

One person can operate the pea sheller, but it really works fast if you have two people, one on each side, feeding the peas through.

You take a few peas from the stack and feed the ends under the guard, where they're grabbed by the rollers.

The peas come out underneath, here....

...and the hulls come out the front, where later on they'll be fed to the cows. (Did you know that you can't feed butterbean hulls to cows, because of the little sharp ends?  But the cows like pea hulls, and they're safe for the cows, too.)

All of this happens while being watched over by their mean guard dog. 

And last, but not least, Daddy weighs the shelled peas on this old scale.  (The scale came out of the country store that my paternal grandparents owned and ran for years.) (By his calculations and experience,  a bushel of purple hulls peas-in-the-pod comes out to 9 pounds of shelled peas.)

So how is your garden growing?

Until next time... 

This post is linked to:

The Creative Home Acre Blog Hop at A Cultivated Nest

Make Your Home Sing Monday at Mom's the Word

Clever Chicks Blog Hop at The Chicken Chick

Garden Tuesday at Sidewalk Shoes

Bloomin' Tuesday at Ms Green Thumb Jean

Tackle It Tuesday at 5 Minutes for Mom

Outdoor Wednesday at A Southern Daydreamer

A Virtuous Woman "Puts Up" Peas

•  Who is like a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She is like the merchants ships, she bringeth her food from afar...
• With her hands she planteth a vineyard..

 

 

Last week I shared pictures of my daddy's garden--this week on my food blog, I have a detailed post about "putting up" purple hull peas for the freezer. 

 

Stop over and check it out!

 

Until next time...

A Virtuous Woman Cooks--Taco Tamale Pie

Check out my latest recipe post, Taco Tamale Pie--this was a definite keeper, one I will make again and again!

Until next time...

A Virtuous Woman Takes A Walk in the Garden

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• With her hands she planteth a vineyard...

I wish this was my garden, but alas, although I had great plans for putting in a bigger, better garden this year, the weather and my husband's busy schedule conspired and we didn't plant a thing this spring.  Luckily for us, though, my mom and dad still garden on a grand scale, and they are generous to fault with their produce.  They grow enough for themselves as well as extra for friends and family.

Walk with me and let me show you my daddy's pride and joy.

On our way to the garden this early morning, we pass by one of two fig trees...

absolutely loaded down with baby green figs. They'll be ripe just about the time that the rest of the garden plays out, I think.

You can see--much larger than my puny little raised beds!

This end is the main pea patch.  Daddy grows purple hull peas, usually Mississippi pink eye purple hulls.  There were a couple of years that you couldn't get seed for this variety anywhere, but luckily they releases some last year and this year, they're our favorite.

You can see almost every stage of a pea on this one plant--the blooms are white on the first day, then as day wears on, they turn yellow.  Eventually the yellow blooms fall off and the little bud that remains starts of grow a pea.  On purple hulls, they start off little and green, then start to get purple as they fill out.  Once these get closer to ready, I'll show you the finished product.

Aren't the blooms pretty? Not as colorful as an ornamental sweet pea, but lovely and delicate, just the same.

These are green beans--at last count, these four(ish) rows had yielded over 71 quarts of green beans!

And they're still making blooms, which means more beans coming.

These blooms are a slight lavender in color. 

(Do you see the green bean at the bottom of the picture?)

Only one row of squash--and I can't tell you how many squash, we've eaten these mostly fresh, and mom and dad have given away tons of these.

I saw Jaimie Oliver batter and fry squash blossoms on his cooking show once, I've been tempted to try it with some of these pretty yellow blooms.

That's about a half row of zucchini back there, beside my parent's mean guard dog.

(My folks were gone for a couple of days and we were tending to her while they were away.  She was moping and pouting about being at home alone, so I decided to take her riding with me.  I ended up taking her town and buying her a happy meal.  Yes, she is wicked mean.)

This was daddy's first attempt at zucchini, and they were a roaring success.

(The empty rows are where they did have onions and potatoes, they're already gone for this year)

Cucumbers in bloom--they are just starting the yield, first one or two a day, and now by the droves.  If the heat doesn't get them, looks like there will be plenty more to come!

Tomatoes are a little late this year, no red ones just yet in these larger ones...

...or among the grape tomatoes.

These are bell pepper, they have a couple of the plants have one or two baby ones, but there were hiding among the leaves and I couldn't get a clear shot.

And sweet corn growing--do you see what I see, right in the middle?

...one lone ear, just starting to tassel.

And last but not least, a few more rows of peas, just to fill the empty rows to the end. 

I hope you enjoyed my "Garden Tour".  How is your garden growing?

Until next time...

This post is linked to:

Make Your Home Sing Monday at Mom's the Word

Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch

Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage

Garden Tuesday at Sidewalk Shoes

Outdoor Wednesday at A Southern Daydreamer

June Garden Party at Elizabeth and Company

Homemaking Party at Hope in Every Season

A Virtuous Woman Cooks--Fried Summer Squash

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She is like the merchants ships, she bringeth her food from afar
• She provideth meat to her household...

I made my family a delicious dinner Sunday night, and everything was homegrown, incluidng the beef!

Check our my recipe for this lightly breaded Fried Summer Squash over at Secrets of a Southern Kitchen!

Until next time...