re: Did You Ever Shell Peas Growing Up?

I can't count the hours spent shelling peas and cutting corn off the cob. At some point, the family as a group bought a pea sheller and that pretty much ended that. But the damn corn...cutting it off the cob with the old wooden thing that you put over the bowl in the sink. That wasn't the bad part but cleaning off the splatters off the backsplash was. That stuff would set up like concrete in a matter of minutes.

I remember being happy I was able to "help" my grandparents. I dug potatoes, hulled peas, shucked corn, and my favorite was the butterbeans because you got to use that knife thing on your thumb that split em. I've shelled many pecans then used a crank grinder to make them pie worthy. I've sat up with my grandpa well past midnight with a .22 rifle and a spotlight more than once protecting the crop. Some of the thieves were served with the same vegetables along with rice in their own gravy.

Those people worked less hours at their workplace than we did. They ate all of the lard, bacon, and cake they wanted. Simple life. Honest work. Simple diet.

Grandpa died at 86 with a pack of camels in his shirt pocket.

Butter Beans by the B-52s

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.

I use to shell peas with my great grandma when i was little. I still remember the smell.

My great grandparents had a farm in southwest Alabama. Spent many summer afternoons under their carport shelling purple hulls. They had a catfish pond, still raised chickens, but since they were older they didn't farm as much. Tons of land out there, but they mostly just grew for themselves and other nearby family. I'm taking my daughter there one weekend this summer to fish and visit the family. They passed it down to one of my mom's cousins a few years before they passed on and it is still in the family 20 years later.

And we have planted a garden this year, and I specifically planted purple hulls so I could pass on the tradition to my kids.

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My dad calls cell phones a human leash.

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Pavlov and his dog's worked for AT&T. We salivate at the sound of a ringtone. And we pay to do it!

I still shell peas and crack pecans, have a garden and many trees. I live on land that's been in the family for 150 years. One of my great (maybe 2 or 3x great) grandad's wagon wheel rims is leaning against a pecan tree in the front yard. I have a couple of 2x great grandmother's roses and camellias too.

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I think it makes me slow down and enjoy my food more. My wife thinks I'm nuts.

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I get that.