Cowpeas & Butterbeans

One of the crops that thrive in our hot, humid climate is southern cowpeas.  I like to plant purple hull peas, blackeyed peas, and ozark razorback peas.  These produce prolifically and we eat a lot of peas and rice with sausage at our house, so we keep up a nice inventory of these in the pantry.  I want to show you another item that we like - Blackeyed Butterbeans.  These are a relatively new item we've rotated in and grown to like.  It has the markings of a blackeyed pea, but is a butter bean.  It vines up on a trellis.  Here is a pod that I just picked.

The blackeyed peas and purple hull peas are all done, but I still have a row of Ozark Razorback peas left to pick.  These peas are mottled with red and white markings.  They're a little smaller than purple hulls or blackeyed peas, but they sure taste great.  Here is a pod I'm about to shell right now:

Shelling peas is a job I don't mind at all.  You don't have to think about it.  You can shell peas while you are rocking on the front porch or watching TV.  It's rewarding to see your bowl fill!  Once we get them shelled, we eat them, freeze them, or put them on the dehydrator and let them dry.  Here is a half of a quart of Blackeyed butterbeans all dried and ready for long-term storage in the pantry.

And here is a half gallon of Ozark Razorback peas that will go in the pantry as well.

When we're ready, we'll soak the peas overnight and then cook them the next day with some onions and tasso and smoked sausage.  Tricia will make a skillet of cornbread with some jalapenos diced in there.  Then she'll put some rice cooking.  Mmmmmmmmm.....

It's Like A Jungle Out There

Summertime.  The long, hot, steamy, baking days of summer.  The crisp spring days are long gone.  Only the strongest survive.  Let's look today at one of the survivors of the dog days of summer.  This crop scoffs at hot weather.  It thrives in harsh conditions.  If Mars was ever to be colonized, the astronauts would be wise to plant this crop.  I must warn you, this portion of the garden in the side yard is not manicured.  It's not growing in neat, tidy rows.  It's a jungle.

"Kyle," you might say, "You let the garden get away from you.  Weed eat all that down and start planning your fall garden."  If I was to do that, I would miss out on one of my favorite meals.  You see, we're looking at a row of purple hull peas and black-eyed peas.  Okay, I'll admit, there's some morning glory growing in there too.  But can you see the purple hulls?  That means they are ready for picking.

The purple hull peas are planted dangerously close to four hives of pretty aggressive bees, so I've got to be alert, quick and sneaky as I quickly get in the patch and get back out.  Like a special forces operator, I get my gear which consists of a wicker basket I use for picking.  Up and down the rows I go, looking for purple hulls.  

In short order, my basket is full, and I'm on the back patio shelling peas.  Shelling peas is a relaxing and rewarding endeavor.  It's an old-timey activity evoking memories of sitting on a rocking chair on the porch shelling peas.  If you listen closely, you can hear the "ping" noise as the peas hit the bottom of the big stainless steel pot you're shelling them into.  The hulls go in a separate bucket to be composted.  There's almost nothing that we don't compost.  The garbage men must scratch their heads when they pick up our weekly garbage can that's almost empty.

Once you get in a rhythm shelling, it's a rewarding experience rescuing the peas from the confines of the purple hulls.  "Freedom!" the peas yell as they are liberated.

Before you know it, you have a 'mess' of purple hull peas.

I was happy this afternoon when, less than 24 hours from shelling, my wife had a pot of rice going, a black cast iron skillet with buttered jalapeno cornbread cooking in the oven, and a big pot of purple hull peas cooking on the stove with onions, peppers and green onion garlic sausage simmering.  I served a big "ant pile mound" of peas over rice on my plate, and my wife asked, "You goin' on a trip?"

That's a nice way of telling me that I was being gluttonous.  When she was growing up as a young child, her brother, David, was running away from home.  Word had gotten out to Tricia's Dad that David was planning to run away.  In his plan, he was going to eat one last meal - a big one, before running away.  As he sat at the table with WAY too much food on his plate, Tricia's Dad asked David, "You goin' on a trip?"  As for me, I'm not going anywhere, but I'll always serve a huge plate of purple hull peas over rice and homemade cornbread.

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.

Slowly Coming Back Around

I'm still far from being back to normal.  I guess it'll just take a little while.  That's okay.  I'm trying to listen to my body and take it slow, but still want to try to do a little more each day so that there's progress.  It hasn't rained in several weeks, so it is real dry.  The garden is suffering a bit, but there are still crops coming in.  I picked some purple hull peas and shelled them and then picked a bunch of Ozark Razorback Peas.  Although I do have some seeds saved, this just comes up year after year.  The peas were mostly dried so they shelled real easily.  I like the speckled color of the Ozark Razorbacks.

I'm not the only one that's slow.  Belle has a thick coat.  She rotates between a few places where she lays up and naps all day.  That's a pretty good plan in the dog days of summer.  In the late afternoon, Belle will come out from her cool hiding spots and try to jump up in the chair with us.  Tricia was telling her here, "Belle, it's not relaxing to have your hot breath in my face."

Since we had great success starting new plants from cuttings on our Vitex or Chaste tree, I've had something on my to do list for quite a while that I got done today.  That task was: Start new blueberry bushes from cuttings.  Our blueberry bushes have been very productive.  Even though we've lost a third of them over the years, the ones that remain grow taller and wider.  I think we put up about four gallons of berries this year.

But with unknown weather, I want to make sure that we have more plants to fill the void should some of our blueberry bushes die.  I walked past our existing plants today with some clippers and clipped of some new softwood growth.

I made 12 cuttings, roughly four inches long, from new growth.  On the bottom of the cuttings, I clipped a diagonal cut just beneath the node on the stem.  Then I clipped off all the leaves except for a couple on top.  I dipped each cutting in water and then dipped the wetted cutting into some rooting hormone.  Then I planted each cutting in some potting soil.  This was the same medium I used in starting the chaste tree cuttings.  They are really thriving right now.

It is very important to keep the soil where you are trying to get the cuttings to root always moist.  So I  have a fool proof system I use in which I put the pot of cuttings into a wagon that has the bottom inch or so of rainwater.  The pot acts as a wick and wicks up the rainwater, keeping the soil moist.  It's also important to keep the cuttings out of the direct sunlight, so I've positioned the wagon under the dense canopy of the pecan tree.

I will keep tending to these and hopefully in a couple of months, we'll see fresh new root growth.  It's very interesting to learn to do new things like this.  Not to mention the fact that, if successful, this will save some serious money.  A blueberry bush, the last time I checked, was running $35 per plant.  I know ALL of the 12 cuttings we're trying won't all take, but if we get ANY of them to root, it will be a successful venture in my book.

I Must Be Turning Into an Old Softie

This is the 45 foot bed that I call the 'garden in the side yard.'  The grass is growing up around it because the last time I tried to mow, our honeybees tore me up!  Next time, I'll be mowing in my bee suit, trust me.  This is where we recently harvested our Irish potatoes.  We've been eating those delicious potatoes.  Here is a baking tray of some split, buttered potatoes, seasoned with sea salt, pepper and fresh cut rosemary.  Oh my!

So now that the potatoes are harvested, what to do with that soil?  Well at this point, there are a few ideas.  More corn?  I don't think so.  Here's what I decided.  Several years ago, I was hardcore about one thing.  No flowers.  We're only planting things in the garden that we can eat.  Tricia can plant flowers in pots on the patio.  The garden?  It's for growing things for eating.  Besides, sugar snap peas and other vegetables have flowers...

And then, something happened.  I began to soften up to the idea of making the garden a thing of beauty.  Why is could nourish your eyes and soul as well as providing sustenance for your taste buds and belly, right?  That heart of stone was transformed into a heart of flesh.  The Bible verse speaks of that below, but it's not talking about flowers in the garden.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.  And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.  Ezekiel 36:26-27

That Scripture is talking about a spiritual change.  I have had a spiritual change, but I just had a change of heart about flowers in the garden.  So in the 'garden in the side yard,' I'm planting 3 rows.  You can see them roughly laid out below:

On the first row on the right, I'm planting some zinnias.  They are multicolored and beautiful and I saved them from dried flowers we grew back in 2018.  It's time to do something with them.  I planted them close together in the event that the seeds are old and germination percent a little low.  We'll see...

The second row.  The second row will be occupied by some Lemon Queen Sunflower Seeds.  I saved these from some flowers we grew as well.  The seeds themselves are sort of small, not like the sunflower seeds you eat.  These were scattered across the row in the middle.

To show you what Lemon Queen Sunflowers look like, here you go.  This one is coming up volunteer in the garden right now.  It makes a big head on top and then a bunch of others on the side.  It brightens up the place, for sure.  How can you be sad looking at a flower like this?

Now don't go thinking I've lost it and have become an old softie and I'll replace cucumbers with daisies or other such foolishness.  The third row will be something we can EAT.  Purple Hull Peas!  I saved a bunch of seeds last year and it's time to get these in the ground.

Purple hulls thrive in the heat.  They scoff at the summer.  They'll produce plenty for us.  While the zinnias pop with color and the sunflowers tower over the garden in the side yard with happiness, the purple hull peas, in utilitarian purpose, will bloom and produce peas that we can shell and cook with some tasso and serve over white rice.  We'll enjoy every bite.  We may enjoy eating them while looking at a vase containing cut zinnias and sunflowers.  

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!

Time For Purple Hull Peas

I like to grow Southern Peas.  They are also called cowpeas.  I read that they were called 'cowpeas' because, you guessed it: they grew it to feed the cows.  They were considered 'poor man's food' because poor people ate them.  Guess what?  They ain't just for po folk - they're for all.  I love to eat them and most people I know love them.  Here's the thing about them - they are a great source of protein (24%) and they fix nitrogen into the soil, making your soil more fertile and productive for the next rotation.  Cowpeas love the heat.  They thrive on it, actually.  I hear talk that there is a meat shortage and that beef prices are high.  Planting cowpeas combats this.

We generally plant several varieties: Purple Hull, Blackeye, Ozark Razorback, and Whippoorwill peas.  They fill in the rows and produce a bountiful crop.  Here is a row of the purple hulls.

Buckwheat, the goat, looks longingly at the ripening crop, wishing he could get through the fence, but it is not to be.

Purple hull peas are aptly named.  They are ripe when the hulls turn purple.  You can see the hulls below turning a tinge of purple, but they aren't quite ready.

Below are some pods that are purple and ready for harvest.  Once they start coming in, every other day you can walk down the rows and pick them.

Once you have a basket full, it's time to shell them.  We do not have an automatic pea sheller.  We shell them the old fashioned way - by hand.  There is something therapeutic and relaxing that you get when shelling peas.  Watching the peas pop into the bowl is rewarding.  Tuesday night, Tricia and I stood shoulder to shoulder and shelled a mess of peas.

We also shelled some Whippoorwill Peas.  Whippoorwill peas are smaller, and I think have a 'nuttier' flavor.

We love to eat them and Tricia finds them to be an easy meal.  All you have to do is put on a pot of rice and cook your peas, adding some diced onions and peppers and some smoked sausage for extra flavor.  A cast iron pot with homemade cornbread kicks this meal up an extra notch!

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.

Purple Hull Pea Pickin'

The hot July summer sun relentlessly bakes what remains of our spring crop into the ground.  This poor zucchini that brought us a bountiful harvest of beautiful, large zucchini that we've eaten for weeks slowly fades...

Her neighbor desperately clings to a tiny sliver of life, but resistance is futile.  The cycle of life of a zucchini in South Louisiana draws to a close.  We've still got some in the vegetable drawer in the fridge, but once that's done, we'll wait until next year.

The cucumbers are dealt a similar cruel hand by nature.  The once green vines filled with yellow blossoms and cucumbers in all stages of maturity now are only skeletal remains, a dry reminder of crisp, cool cucumbers sliced in the fridge.  We have a few more and then it's all done. 

But there is one crop just coming on.  It scoffs at the heat and dry conditions.  "Bring it on," it mocks.  That would be Purple Hull Peas.  I walked out to check on the progress and noted that I could go ahead and pick a half bucket.  They were just beginning to ripen with lots more to come.

The neighboring row has peanuts and then blackeyed peas on the next row thereafter.  The blackeyes will be ready real soon.

I quickly pick all the peas in which the pods are mostly purple.  It doesn't take long.  There are many more to come in various stages of maturity.  I'll have to pick every other day to keep up.

You can see why they get their name: Purple Hull Peas.  It is a southern staple.  We had a preacher that grew up in the Great Depression.  He used to tell us that they were very poor but always had food on the table that they grew from their land by the sweat of their brow.  He'd always say, "We'd have rice and beans one night and then momma would mix it up and the next night we'd have beans and rice!"

They are a good source of protein and are just good to eat.  Served over rice with some tasso or smoked sausage for a little flavor and maybe a skillet of hot buttered cornbread on the side - wow!  That's some good food, right there.

It is always a relaxing thing to sit down in the evening and shell peas.  The rhythmic plunk, plunk, plunk of the peas being released from the shell and slowly filling the bowl is a comforting sound - a sound of sufficiency, a sound of sanity in a crazy world.  Pass the peas, please.

Harvesting Cowpeas in Late Summer

Summer is hard on a garden (and those individuals tending said garden!)  The temperatures are hot and sap your strength.  Plants wilt in the heat.  The humidity is high, making it an unpleasant chore to do any gardening.  Things dwindle down at this time, except for two main items - okra and cow peas.  Today we'll talk about cowpeas.  These things are a southern staple.  Cow peas are thought to have originated in West Africa.  They are well-adapted to the heat and to drought, so they do well during the summer.

I generally plant a row or two in the garden and a 48 foot row of them in the bed in the side yard.  Cow peas don't need a lot of fertilizer as they are a legume that has nodules that set its own nitrogen.  They'll start blooming all at once and once you start harvesting, they'll continue setting pods for quite a while.  In the photo below, you can see blooms in the center and center left along with full, mature pods and a young pod that you can't see the peas forming in it yet.

Varying stages of cow pea growth

The cow peas I grow mainly appear to be bush-type, however, if there is anything for them to trellis on, they will send out vines and climb.  In the photo below, some black-eyed peas have climbed up to the top of my okra plants - easily 8 feet tall!

Climbing the okra stalks and setting pods

Each afternoon I grab a bucket and go out and pick ripened cow peas.  Cow peas are said to be a "poor man's meal" due to its high protein.  We like cooking them with some smoked meat and serving over rice with some home made cornbread on the side.  We like to sit around the island in the kitchen and shell peas.  We'll eat some and then as soon as we have a quart, we'll freeze some for later.  It is an easy meal that makes everyone happy.

I usually plant three different types of cowpeas.  The seeds are easy to save and plant the following year.  Below on the far left, you'll see the Black-eyed pea.  In the center is the Ozark Razorback Pea.  On the far right is the Purple-Hull pea.  We don't really have a preference.  We usually mix them up and cook them all together. 

As long as the peas keep producing, we'll keep pickin' and shellin'...

Purple Hull Peas (with a few black-eyed peas at the bottom)

It is good to have items like this in your garden - items that continue to thrive even when the growing environment seems so brutal.