Save it for a Rainy Day

Do you remember a few short years ago when toilet paper was in short supply because everyone was hoarding it due to a respiratory virus?  Then there was a chip shortage and people couldn't buy or repair their cars.  I work for an insurance company and body shops are still having difficulty finding some parts.  Broken vehicles sit unrepaired and status shows "NO ETA."  My wife was in the grocery store last week and they were having a brown-out due to limited electricity.

As I think about these things, if toilet paper is in short supply, there are other (albeit uncomfortable) alternatives.  If we can't get computer chips or car parts, well, there are worse things.  With lack of power, yes, things get uncomfortable.  But what happens if the grocery store shelves are empty?  With the "just-in-time" inventory method in place, stores don't have a big inventory sitting in the back room.  What would you do?  Have you thought about it?

I have.  You might say, "We'll plant a big garden!"  Stellar idea.  But what happens if you can't get seeds!  THIS ARTICLE tells us that during the pandemic, the Michigan governor banned seed sales.  What if there was a run on seeds and there was none to buy?  "Don't eat your seed corn" is a valuable life principle.  Every seed that you have can either be eaten OR saved to plant for next year's crop.  Make sure you always save seed for next year.  

We do that.  First, you must ensure that you are buying non-hybrid seed.  We buy our seeds from www.rareseeds.com and save seeds from our crops every year.  It's just a wise thing to do.  We've just completed saving a few items.  Here are some blackeyed peas:

These are some black turtle beans:

These are some Ozark Razorback peas (I see I have some blackeyed peas that jumped into this bowl):

These are my new favorites - Blackeyed Butterbeans:

Here are some purple hull peas:

And finally, some purple teepee beans:

Here they are.  I'll store these away and date them.  I did an experiment and planted some Ozark Razorback peas that were 11 years old.  The germination was down, but I anticipated this and planted them super close.  They grew and produced!

It's always good to be prepared and save seeds in the event you can't get them.  You can save some money by doing this, too!  Then, if you have too many, you can always eat the remainder that you don't need for next year's seeds.  The fun thing about it is that you can always trade your seeds for other people's seeds that you don't have.  I like to try new things in the garden.  Time to check your seed inventory for the fall crop.  Save those seeds!  

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!

Growing a New (For Us) Type of Cowpea (Southern Pea)

Saturday morning is a morning different from other mornings.  We slow down the pace to that of a three-toed sloth or maybe a snail.  It is a day that we allow the sun to beat us outside.  We rise at a respectable hour, have coffee, and slowly make our way out to milk the cows.  Once finished, I usually take a stroll through the garden, not to work, mind you (that comes later in the day), but just to take in all the changes that I didn't get to observe during the week. 

It is usually around 9AM by this time and the sun filters through the live oak trees to our east and lights up the garden with soft light.  I notice the beautiful blooms of some peas.  If you look closely below, you can see that a fire ant is enjoying the bloom as well.  Can you see that dad-gum thing on the flower?

This beautiful bloom is on a new plant for us.  Several years ago, we went to a sustainable agricultural conference.  In one part of the conference, they have a seed exchange.  They invite attendees to bring heirloom seed to trade.  It is a good opportunity to pick up some new varieties of old heirloom seeds that you can't buy from seed companies.  These are seeds passed down in families from generation to generation.

This bloom is from a plant in the Southern Pea family called a Whippoorwill Pea.  I had never heard of it before.  I opened the small brown envelope with a hand-written label containing the seeds and planted them a couple months ago.  The seeds were old.  I was not optimistic, but lo and behold, they grew!  And now they are blooming and setting pods of peas.

The peas seem immune to the heat and dry conditions of south Louisiana and send out vines that stretch across the ground and climb up the trellis supporting the luffah gourds and birdhouse gourds.  This is an old seed!   This seed was harvested from the gardens at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's garden.  Here is what is written about it from the Monticello website:

In 1798 Thomas Jefferson wrote that the cowpea (also called southern, crowder, or field pea) "is very productive [and an] excellent food for man and beast."  He also praised the species' ability to improve the tilth and fertility of the soil.  Cowpeas, first brought to the southeastern U.S. by African slaves, were sowed in the South Orchard at Monticello between 1806 and 1810.  Whippoorwill Cowpea, a bush variety with short runners, purple flowers, and 7-9" pods, was popular in the 19th century.

The pods of the Whippoorwill pea turn white when they are ready for harvest.  I've been picking quite a few of them. 

In the evenings I sit in the kitchen and shell peas.  Sometimes the boys help me if they are around.  It goes faster when you have help, but like Saturday mornings, we don't get in a rush.  Shelling peas is a relaxing exercise.  Time seems to stand still.  The stress of the days' demands roll off of you like water off a duck's back. 

When you are done, there is the gratification of a job well done.  Here we have a nice bowl of fresh-shelled Whippoorwill Peas.

Whippoorwill Peas are different from other cowpeas.  They are a little smaller and have a green-grey mottled color.  I like the way they look.

Now, to complete our review, we just need to cook up a pot of them and taste them.  The flowers are pretty, they laugh at the heat and dry conditions of the summer, the yield is great, and they are nice to look at.  The proof, though, is how they taste.  I'll report back on that.  I am optimistic and have saved some of the best looking pods to hold back for next year's Whippoorwill Pea seed planting.

These peas have survived for over 200 years in America.  Might as well do my part to keep them going for at least another season.

Pea-Pickin' in the Country

I received a call on Friday afternoon as I was driving home.  It was from a gentleman at our church asking me if I would like to come and pick some peas.  We have purple-hull peas and black-eyed peas in our garden, but they aren't near ready.  I told him I'd be there in the morning.  This gentleman doesn't grow a garden - he grows a field.

The next morning I showed up with a 5 gallon bucket and began walking down the rows picking peas.  The previous evening I had seen on the Internet where many of our cities are burning.  Roving gangs of people were damaging businesses, breaking glass, spray painting graffiti, and doing unspeakable things to one another.  It was hard to watch.

As I walked down the rows in the pea patch, it was quiet.  The field was empty.  The sky was clear.  The sunlight brilliantly shone down.  There was peace.  I was very thankful to live in the country, far away from unrest and anger and violence.  The contrast couldn't have been more stark.  It was quiet aside from song birds singing in the distance.

I walked between the rows, picking pea pods from either side, and then I would scoot my bucket a pace or two forward.  The peas were plentiful!

It didn't take me long to fill up a 5 gallon bucket!  I was offered more, but we will have purple hull peas and blackeyed peas coming in a little later this summer from our own garden. 

Russ and I sat in the kitchen and started shelling peas.  I have to tell you, shelling peas and shelling pecans are two of the most relaxing things.  It's not really work.  It is a pleasant task that occupies you while visiting, listening to music or just passing the time at home.  It becomes automatic.  Your pile of empty pea pods grows and your bowl of peas gradually fills.

It is one of those immediate gratification things where you see the fruits of your labor. 

These peas are a local heirloom called "Crack Peas."  I tried to research them on the Internet, but could not find any information at all on them.  We will bag them up in quart-sized freezer bags and cook with some tasso, bacon, or smoked sausage and serve over rice with some cornbread on the side. 

This evening at church, the gentleman offered all church members to go to his field and pick as many peas as they can carry home.  That's what is so great about being in a church family that loves one another and cares about one another.  As we watch our cities burn, many are asking themselves what will make it stop?  Maybe if they could visit the country and spend some time picking peas in the silence, breathing in good, clean country air, they would have a change of heart?

It's like our preacher said this morning, "It's not a skin issue, it's a sin issue.  It's not lack of justice, it's lack of Jesus."  Let's pray for our Country.  God bless the USA!

Purple Hull Pea Pickin'

Purple hulls and pintos I've shelled more than my share

Cause lighting bugs and crickets danced in the evening air

And like a beacon that ol' yellow bulb it always led me home

Some how mama always knew just when to leave it on

If the world had a front porch like we did back then

We'd still have our problems but we'd all be friends

Treatin' your neighbor like he's your next of kin

Wouldn't be gone with the wind

If the world had a front porch like we did back then 

                                                                      -Tracy Lawrence

The purple hull peas that I planted in the side yard after harvested the Irish Potatoes are starting to come in now.  Every afternoon we go out and pick a "mess" of them.  You can tell why they are named purple hull peas:

Shelling peas is a nice, relaxing thing to do.  I really enjoy just sitting down, getting a bowl for the peas and a bucket for the pods, and getting busy.  Russ likes to shell them, too.

Fresh-shelled peas are a beautiful thing to look at, but a more beautiful thing to see simmering on the stove-top with some smoked sausage for a little extra flavor.  We like to eat them over rice with some cornbread.

We've eaten a big pot of them already and have already started shelling another batch of them!

Although the purple hull peas are still flowering and will continue to produce for a while, I've staged the planting so that when the purple hulls peter out, the Ozark Razorback peas and Blackeyed Peas will begin.  We'll likely put a bunch in the freezer for quick suppers later.

Harvested a Few Things This Weekend

If the ground was dry it would be the perfect time to work up some ground with my hoe and plant some beans and corn.  However, there's more freezing weather coming and the rains keep falling.  That's okay.  We'll be patient and wait.  There's still plenty of things to do in the garden while we wait.  We can do a little harvesting.  While some of the carrots still have some growing to do, some are the PERFECT size.  In the wet soil, it's easy to tell which carrots are ready.  You simply run your fingers around the top of the carrot root to see if they are mature and ready to pull. 

Here is a nice cosmic purple carrot.  I don't know if the size and symmetry could be more perfect.  Cosmic Purple carrots are strange looking, but when you slice them open, they are orange just like a normal carrot.  They taste like a normal carrot, too. 

While the cosmic purple carrot may be the show off on the carrot row, the plain-jane, boring carrot on the row is the simple, white carrot.  It isn't a parsnip.  It is just a white carrot.  The cosmic purple carrot sports a flashy purple jacket, but inside it is orange just like any other carrot.  The white carrot is solid white through and through.  It may just be my mind playing tricks on me wanting something to be special about the boring white carrot, but I think it tastes sweeter than the purple or orange carrots.

You may recall that a very wet fall spelled doom for my cole crops.  The overwhelming majority of my cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli crop that I had nurtured from seedlings succumbed to a watery grave.  I enjoy growing things from seeds, but I wasn't going to let disaster keep me from enjoying eating the bounty from the winter garden.  There's always a "Plan B."  The local hardware store had seedlings for me to buy and plant.  The broccoli and cauliflower have all been eaten and now the cabbage are coming in.  Big, nice heads of cabbage there for the pickin'.

I picked out the biggest one to pick and we'll leave the others to continue to grow.  We love to eat cabbage - just cooking it down in a cast iron skillet, making a simple cole slaw, or chopping it up and making homemade egg rolls...  We may even make sauer kraut again this year.

Of course we always share the bottom leaves with the cows.  They LOVE cabbage!

That's how the cow ate the cabbage!

It's the best of both worlds.  Colorful and delicious!

With Rosie and her little bull calf (Aussie) looking on, I moved to the sugar snap peas.  These are growing on a trellis and they are now over eight feet tall and still growing.  I don't know how I'm going to reach the peas on the top.  The weight of the peas coupled with high winds we had a couple of weeks ago caused some of the tendrils to break free from the trellis, but they are mostly still attached and growing.

The blooms are abundant...

And each day new pods fill out and develop.  We're picking every third day...

They taste so good and sweet.  Many times I just stand by the trellis and eat them right off the vine.

The pods are crisp, but tender and sweet.  I like to pop them open sometimes and admire the perfection of a pod of peas before popping them in my mouth.

Tricia was making a pan of homemade corn bread, so I picked a mess of mustard greens.  Cornbread is mustard green's best companion.  This will be the end of the mustard greens.  tThey are not young and tender anymore and have a stronger taste than earlier in the season, but I'll enjoy them this one last time.

That's enough for the day's harvest.  Perhaps next weekend it will dry up enough to begin planting the spring garden.  garde

A Smorgasbord of Beans and Peas

Tricia and I were having an afternoon cup of coffee on Saturday, sitting out on the swing in the backyard.  It was pretty hot and we were discussing how the month of June is a very busy one in the garden.  July - not so much.  By the time July rolls around, the tomatoes are done, the cucumbers have all but quit producing and the yellow squash and zucchini squash are waving white flags at the heat.

In July the crops still producing include okra.  My goodness, okra is such a hardy crop.  The hotter it gets, okra doubles down and grows taller, adds more blooms and produces pods in open defiance of the sun.  Peppers are also really hopping.  Jalapeno, sweet bell, and banana peppers load up.  Last but not least are the numerous varieties of southern peas, lima beans and and pole beans.  It is at this time that those peas and beans spread like wildfire across the garden.

While they were planted in an orderly fashion in neat rows with the intention of keeping things separated, something happened along the way.  It is as if they had a mind of their own and decided that there are no barriers and they resolved to intertwine themselves into a jungle-like mass of vegetation.  That's okay, I thought.  I'll just harvest them all, even though they are mixed up, and enjoy the different colors and shapes and sizes of peas and beans.  I brought them in and shelled them.

A non-exhaustive list of peas and beans include: purple hull peas, Ozark razorback peas, blackeyed peas, dixie speckled butterbeans, baby limas, whippoorwill peas, Reverend Taylor beans, Cades Cove peas...  I think I'm forgetting a few, but who's counting.

I remember growing up, from time to time, my mom would buy a package of dried beans and peas that represented a mixture of different types.  It was called 13 Bean Soup.  We always enjoyed it.  We like to re-create that dish when we have a plethora of peas like we currently do.  We soak the beans overnight and then add tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers.  For a smoky flavor, Tricia adds cut up smoked sausage to the pot. 

This dish is a hearty one that sure can warm you up on a cold winter's day.  However, I'm not going to push this away on a hot summer's day.

The peas and beans are continuing to produce in the heat and we continue to harvest and shell them.  We have another bowl of our version of 13 bean soup ready to be worked into the rotation for supper one night this week.  We'll need to make some cornbread, too.  Nothing like crumbling some cornbread on top to take this dish to the next level.

Purple Hull Peas, If You Please

The rains we've received in the past couple of weeks has really made the grass start to grow.  It was high time.  The cows and goats and chickens had the pasture eaten down so much the remaining grass resembled felt on a pool table.  The rains also kicked the weeds in the garden into overdrive.  But let's look at the positive, shall we?  The purple hull peas have been a beneficiary of the rain, too!  Green immature pods cover the garden rows, accompanied by white blooms and the ripened purple hulls of the peas that gave the pea its name.

It has been very hot and humid the past few days, but I made the most of an opportunity yesterday between rain showers to go outside and pick peas. 

I went down one side of the row and then back up the other side, picking ripe peas and pulling weeds.  I threw the weeds over the fence where the goats and chickens quickly gobbled them up.  I had to be real careful where walking as watermelon vines, cantaloupe vines, and sweet potato vines compete for real estate.  I spotted more than a few melons growing.  They look like they'll be ripe just in time for July 4th.

I picked a pretty good "mess" of peas and brought them inside.  Bending over and picking peas is a task, a chore, to be sure.  There are mosquitoes.  It is hot.  It makes your back hurt.  It is nice when you come to the end of the row.

But the work isn't done.  Those peas aren't going to shell themselves, no sirree.  Shelling peas, however, is an enjoyable task.  I sat down at the island in the kitchen while Tricia cooked down fresh picked okra and tomatoes for supper and I began shelling peas into a tupperware container.  Plop, plop, plop.  The fat peas made a pleasant noise as they plopped into the container.

We ate supper and then I moved the pea-shelling endeavor into the den.  In no time flat the pea shelling was done.  I had a full container of fresh-shelled peas and a full bucket of empty pea pods to compost back into the garden.

I dropped a hint to my wife that purple hull peas over rice with smoked sausage or tasso would be real good.  Also added that some homemade cornbread to accompany that meal would make me happy.  The simple things in life are the best!

Lesson Learned - Pumpkins Don't like Wet Soil

In THIS BLOG POST FROM AUGUST you were able to read about how we planted pumpkins and got to see some beautiful, healthy pumpkin plants with broad green leaves.  The plants were vining and putting out blooms.  I could even see some baby pumpkins.  And then the floodgates opened, figuratively speaking. The rains started and have not let up.  Let's go out and take a look at the pumpkin patch.

Wait just one cotton-picking minute!  Where are the pumpkins?  All I see is a weed patch.  Planting directions for pumpkins say that they must be planted in soil rich in compost and soil that is well drained and not soggy.  The soil in which I planted our pumpkins fit those specifications perfectly. So what happened?  Well, a month of rain almost every single day has the ability to turn the driest of soil into a mudfest.  Our beautiful pumpkin plants turned yellow and died.

As I kicked amongst the dead pumpkin vines, I came across a Jack-Be-Little pumpkin in the weeds that seemed to mock me.  This is our 2016 pumpkin crop! Sad.  Oh well, there's always next year.

But all is not lost.  In the same blog post I linked at the top of this post, I talked about also planting some cowpeas in the northern end of the pumpkin patch.  It was a mixture of some saved seed that included Blackeye peas, Ozark Razorback peas, Purple Hull peas, and Holstein peas.  While pumpkins get sick and die in wet soils, cowpeas can be a lot more forgiving.  Actually, they seem to be almost immune to all the rainfall.  They (along with some weeds, admittedly) have grown nicely.

The peas were tall and had many pods ripe for the picking.  I went inside and got a bucket and spent the next 15 minutes walking around the pea patch, poking around in the canopy and picking cowpeas. The fact that something in the garden was still thriving other than weeds was encouraging and lifted my spirits.

I picked a nice 'mess' of peas in varying stages of ripeness and brought them inside and washed them off.  Fresh picked peas always have all sorts of little critters on them, especially aphids, ants and stinkbugs.

I hollered at Benjamin who was in his bedroom.  Benjamin likes to shell peas.  We sat in the den and shelled peas while we watched a college football game.  That's one of my favorite things to do!  In no time we were done and had shelled an assortment of cowpeas of the varieties we discussed above and it measured out to be a little more than a quart.  In a few days, Tricia will put a pot of rice cooking and then she'll cook these peas with some sausage added to give a little smokey flavoring and we'll eat a fine meal of peas over rice.  That'll stick to your ribs.

Although the pumpkin patch was certainly disappointing, I'm happy with the peas and they'll continue to bear for a while now.  Also, I think if we root around in the deep freeze for a bit, we may find a ziploc bag or two of processed pumpkin from last year.  We may get that pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving yet!