re: Did You Ever Shell Peas Growing Up?

We shelled by hand when I was young, but by the time I was a teenager our family and another shared a pea sheller. It was one of these kind.



Some griped that the rollers "mashed" the peas, and they would if you picked the peas too green. The peas had to be full mature to shell properly.

Even that was a slow go, feeding a few peas at a time by hand, and it didn't really work for beans.

Then a farmer in our area got one of the large tumbler style shellers. You dumped in a whole bushel, flipped the switch, and the peas, pintos, or butterbeans rained out like magic with no mashing.



That was when hand-shelling became history for me. My parents still raise a lot of peas and shell with the roller-style, but I've gone full modern city boy.