Picture it. It's 2 am and peas are flying all over the kitchen. Let me set the stage for this scene.
When I was growing up, my father raised huge vegetable gardens--an acre or more. We lived in town, without a very big yard, so friends would let him use land on their farms for his plantings. Every evening after work, he would go tend the garden and sometimes my sister and I would join him to work on our jobs - weeding and/or picking. But our main job was when we got home - processing the produce.
When we were younger, we helped our mother and learned the ins and outs of proper canning and freezing. When we were older, we did all of the canning and freezing since our mother worked a lot of hours at her nursing job. We knew that when freshly picked peas or corn came into the house that they had to be frozen (this was preferred over canning because of taste) as quickly as possible because the natural sugars in them started to change into starch as soon as they were picked degrading the quality.
So it would go something like this. After an evening in the garden, we would start washing and shelling peas around 9 pm. When we got enough peas shelled, one of us would start blanching them while the other kept shelling. After the blanching, we would cool them in a big dish pan using ice we had frozen in orange juice cans. Then into containers and into the freezer. This would go on until we finished, usually until the middle of the night sometime.
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| If you would like to try one, I found this on Ebay. |
We'd then go to bed and get up the next day to process whatever else there was that could wait. And so it went. That was until one day when my mother bought a gadget that she thought would help - The Magic Fingers Sheller. It was a yellow, plastic box that hooked up to a hand mixer. The mixer ran two electric rollers that you fed peas through. The rollers would squeeze out the peas in one direction and the shells in another. And it worked, except when it didn't. Sometimes the peas would get stuck and you would have to retrieve them and restart the process. Other times, the peas would fly out of the rollers and land who knows where.
At first, my sister and I found the stuck and bouncing peas very aggravating, but as the night wore on, we found it funnier and funnier. As those peas ricocheted around the kitchen, sometimes we laughed until we cried. I guess you had to be there to really get it, but those late nights with my sister and the pea sheller are among my favorite memories of growing up.
I can just picture it myself, great P post!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Martha. We still talk about that pea sheller all of these decades later.
DeleteI can imagine how comedic that all seemed in the late hours of the night!
ReplyDeleteYour story illustrates how time-consuming and physically difficult it must be to grow and preserve enough food for a family.
We did grow most of our food and it was a lot of work. It was just the way things were done. In addition, my mother developed allergies to all food additives and that was before you could find any food in the grocery store that was additive free or organic. So having food that we had grown ourselves was very important.
DeleteOh, that's funny. I tend to get punchy when I'm overtired so I can just imagine the scene with your sister.
ReplyDeleteMy son loved frozen peas when he was tiny, and I loved how easy and healthy they were to feed to him. Inevitably some of the peas would get stuck in his clothes and roll off him in different areas as he went crawling around. I went through a period of time when I found a lot of dessicated peas in various areas around my house!
The pea story with your son reminds me of one with our cats. They liked to play with baby carrots, so anytime I put a bowl of carrots on the counter to snack on, they would get up and retrieve one and then bat it around the house. I found more than one dried up carrot from this. And no, they weren't allowed on the counter. They solved this problem by getting up when no one was looking and never got caught.
DeleteYou had the example of hard working parents and with your sister you contributed to family life. I too can just imagine all those peas rolling around the kitchen late at night. I love fresh pods peas in summer, and cannot get enough of them to eat as a snack.
ReplyDeleteWe had very hard working parents. They came from difficult backgrounds and hard work helped them get ahead. They set very good examples for us, so my sisters and I value hard work.
DeletePeas make a great snack. I hope we can harvest some this year before the rabbits have their fill.
What a fascinating story - so much time and effort involved in growing and harvesting. The Magic Fingers sheller looks like it'd be useful, but I can definitely see the chaos it would cause when it didn't work. A whole new meaning for pea shooters. I imagine the camaraderie and laughter made the long hours a lot easier.
ReplyDeleteYep, a whole new meaning to a pea shooter. :)
DeleteOh, my goodness, I can just imagine the scene in the kitchen with peas flying around! What a lot of work it would have been to process all that fresh produce your father grew! I think you should buy that pea sheller you found on Ebay and give it as a birthday/Christmas gift to your sister! :D
ReplyDeleteI like that idea and she would get a big kick out of it. Now I will have to figure out if I want to give her something that she doesn't have room for. I will have to think about this, but thanks for the suggestion.
DeleteOmg that is funny and I can picture kids laughing especially as the hours rolled on. I've never been a big pea eater, except for raw from the shell.
ReplyDeleteI like peas - especially fresh ones. However, they can be overcooked and not taste so good. Do you every eat frozen peas? They're pretty good, too.
DeleteI’m sure humour helped when you were tired and I can easily visualise the peas flying everywhere. It seems shelling peas is the job of kids everywhere.
ReplyDeletehttps://cassmobfamilyhistory.com/2021/04/19/passionfruit-pufftaloons-and-paella/