Walk-around Wednesday

We had Worship Service this afternoon at one of the nursing homes in town.  It was a nice time.  Our little church always enjoys visiting there, singing old hymns, praying, and opening the Word of God.  It was a 'sweet' time.  The Bible compares the Word of God to being priceless and sweet:

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.  Psalm 19:10

Speaking of honeycomb, one of our milk customers dropped by to pick up his milk and had a sweet treat for us.  He had just returned from Mittie, Louisiana, where he got some honeycomb just dripping with honey.  We are eating this by the spoonful, and it's not gonna last too long.

The second thing I saw today is that the two rows of cowpeas I planted are popping up nicely.  I have one row of purple hull peas and one row of black-eyed peas that we planted in the garden in the side yard where we had just harvested Irish Potatoes.  They seem to thrive in the heat and humidity.  The only thing that affects them are aphids, but I've got some neem oil ready to go when I see them on the plants.  I've bordered the pea patch with sunflowers.

Just to the north of the peas, I planted Cinderella pumpkins, Peanut Pumpkins and New England Sugar Pie Pumpkins along with some assorted gourds.  They aren't up yet.  This planting is an experiment because the seeds are old (2017) and were saved from some pumpkins my parents brought back from a trip to South Dakota.  I planted a lot of seeds on each hill, assuming that since they're old, the germination might not be too good.  We'll watch and see what happens.

Finally, I wanted to show you a basket of peppers we picked.  It is my new favorite variety.  They're called Shishito Peppers.  I'll show you next week a delicious recipe that we found for them.  

We'll talk again tomorrow night.

A New Way to Shell Peas (For Us)

We were blessed a couple of weeks ago by a gentleman at church.  He gave us a pea sheller that he was no longer using.  For years we've been shelling peas by hand.  I love shelling peas.  It is a relaxing, therapeutic endeavor that is guaranteed to reduce your blood pressure and pulse rate.  I don't know what it is about sitting down with a bushel of peas and a big bowl and shelling, but it puts you in a good frame of mind.  

Our new pea sheller is electric.  It is fast.  You turn it on and put the pea pod into the mouth of the machine.  The pod is pulled through two rubber rollers.  One roller is on a spring.  As the pulley turns the rollers and the pod is sucked through, the peas are popped out into a tray below and the empty shells are thrust into a separate tray.

I'm trying to figure out which tray your fingers go into if you aren't careful!  If I get careless and lose a a couple of digits, I want to make sure Tricia knows which tray to retrieve my fingers so she can sew them back on.  I kid, I kid.

Depending on the size of your peas, you can loosen the wing nuts and adjust the opening.  That's the safety device that keeps you from losing a finger or two.

Here's the empty pods being pushed through.  We'll put these into the compost pile.

And here are the results of our first experiment with our newfangled, super duty, Cummins diesel-powered, turbo-charged pea sheller.  (I may have embellished that description a bit.)  You can see the results look pretty decent.  

As I look over the shelled peas, I can pick out several different varieties: black-eyed peas, purple hulled peas, Ozark razorback peas, and whippoorwill peas.  That is a nice diversity of pea varieties, but it ushered in a problem.  I learned that you can only feed one variety in at a time.  They must be sorted by size and the rollers of the pea sheller must be adjusted for each variety.  This is done with a screwdriver.

If you don't do this, you'll either squash your bigger-sized peas like black-eyes and purple hulls OR the smaller peas like Ozark razorback and whippoorwills will pass right through and not be ejected by the rollers.  As with anything new, you learn from your mistakes.  Tricia put on a pot of white rice and cooked the peas with some smoked sausage and onions and the first peas shelled in our pea sheller have already been consumed.

With the test done, we're now prepared.  If we still have electricity, the new pea sheller will come in mighty handy.  If we lose power, the old, manual pea sheller (our hands) will get the job done as well!

Slowing The Pace Down

For the past three weeks, there hasn't been much time at all for life on the farm - for me that is.  I have a great and supportive family.  My wife and sons have pitched in and taken care of business, cleaning up the yard, patching a hole in the barn roof, and taking care of the animals.  I was able to leave a little early from work this weekend, and Sunday was the first day that I was able to see Our Maker's Acres Family Farm in the daylight.  It was nice.

I went out to the garden and picked a 5 gallon bucket of black-eyed peas and purple-hull peas.  Some were ripe for the pickin'.  Others were over-ripe and dried, but that's okay.  They'll eat just fine.  I walked back to the patio and sat down and just gazed at the peaceful surroundings.  I looked up in the live oak tree and saw large "widow-maker" branches that had been broken by the 100 mph winds.  The limbs broken by violence of nature sat juxtaposed against the peaceful backyard and the enjoyable event that was about to take place.

It was time to shell peas.  All you need is time.  Some people have automatic pea shellers and there may come a time when old-age and arthritis requires that we get one.  For now, shelling peas by hand is just fine.  You need a bowl and a bucket to throw the pods in.

Pea shelling is one of those rare things in life in which you get immediate gratification of seeing the fruits of your labors.  A full bucket of fresh-picked peas quickly is transformed into a bowl of shelled peas and a bucket of pea pods that will be returned to the earth when we compost.

Watching the peas in the bowl grow in volume is a satisfying event. Often Russ will come sit down with me and shell some.  You can observe in the bowl below why Black-eyed peas are called black-eyed peas.

You can tell which peas were dried by their sun-bleached color and which peas were ripe, but not dried, by the green color and plump girth of the peas.

Cowpeas are a crop that seems to thrive in the harshest of conditions.  Even in the peak of summer months, they scoff at the heat and drought that assaults them.  And they produce peas packed with protein that will feed our family.

Pea shelling is a satisfying exercise that allows you to slow down the hectic, frenetic pace of modern life into a peaceful, slow, but productive endeavor.  As your bowl increasingly fills with peas, your stress level is reduced.  There's only one thing better than shelling them - eating them.  Tricia will put on a pot of rice and in another pot, shell cook the peas with some smoked sausage.  If I'm lucky, she'll cook some cornbread to go along with it.  It is an easy, but satisfying meal that reminds me of childhood and simplicity and honest country living.

Sunday Morning Silent Garden Stroll

11 For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.  Isaiah 61:11 NIV

This morning after Sunday morning milking I wanted to walk through the garden.  Last night we had a family night out to the movies in Lafayette and didn't get to pick okra.  Okra grows so doggone fast.  If you miss a day picking, the okra goes from tender to woody and inedible.  I wanted to make sure I picked it early this morning.  The morning sun was filtering through the trees on the east side of the garden.   

Yesterday's refreshing rain had everything blooming.  Here are some beautiful lima bean blooms.

Just underneath the canopy of lima bean leaves that cover the trellis, you can see pods full of fat lima beans!

On the next row I see black-eyed peas blooming.

A luffa gourd that came up volunteer from last year's seeds is blooming as well.  Its bright yellow flowers full of nectar is attracting honey bees as you can see this one making a "bee-line" for the flower.

It landed and began filling itself with pollen.  The bee hive in our column is gone.  It makes me wonder where his hive is now.  It is good to know that there is still a colony of bees in the vicinity to keep things pollinated.

Just a few steps down and you can see purple hull peas blooming in the center of the photo, with a pod that will be turning purple soon.  In the top left corner of the photo is a dragon fly.  Can you spot him?

Towering above the garden near the end of the garden are the stalks of okra.  Big beautiful blooms announce the soon arrival of more pods of okra. 

It doesn't take long for a bloom to turn into okra pods.  You can see okra at various stages of development just behind the flower below.

More black-eyed pea blooms pop up in the Sunday morning sunshine.  Cowpeas and okra relish the warm, humid conditions prevalent here now.

They keep thriving, putting out pods that we'll be shelling soon.  Lots of work still remains to be done in the garden.  We'll be busy harvesting and then working on getting the fall garden in pretty soon.

I spotted this guy trying to blend in with an okra stalk!

It's Sunday morning.  He's not in any hurry... Nor should I!