Peas and me

Today I went to Bangerter Farms and bought garden peas. I really like them with potatoes in a cream sauce. 

I will have to tell you about my adventure in the pea patch. When I was about four years old we were living in Rexburg and my father had a garden in the back yard. I would go out and lay down in the row between the pea vines and pick the ripe peas and eat them until I was full. 

We had gardens off and on while I was growing up. Peas and corn on the cob were and still are my favorite vegetables. 

I like them fresh and can’t stand them from the can. I barely tolerate them frozen. 

When we lived in Lander we had a big garden. We raised a lot of peas. My mother would cook them with new potatoes. We had so many peas that my mother froze them after blanching them. 

Because shelling the peas was hard work, we developed a quick way to shell the peas. We had an old fashioned washer with a wringer. We would place the pea in the wringer and the pod would come out the back and the shelled peas would fall into a tub in the front. We could shell a lot of peas in a very short time that way. After my parents got an automatic washer we had to shell them the old fashioned way. 

My father preferred the Laxton Progress variety. They can be planted as late as July for harvest in September. 

My father, at one time, worked at a job on a pea seed farm, rouging peas.  This endeavor was to raise peas that were later sold for seed and not to be eaten.  He would go along the rows of peas and hoe out the weeds and look for the rouge plants that he called ‘rabbit-ears’.  These were plants that were not true to the variety that were desirable for seed. He would then pull up the rabbit-ear plant.  The crop of peas was then allowed to grow to maturity and then when the vines were brown and dry, a special combine harvester would come and go over the field and separate the dried seed from the pods and vines and then they would be sold for seed to be used the next year.  He said that the region of Idaho where he lived was ideal for cultivating peas, because of warm days and cool nights.

How about eating some fresh peas and remember me.

Love,

Grandpa