Peas

Saturday turned out to be a very long day.  It was a good one, though, although we have no plans of repeating it.  Gayle got permission from a local farmer to pick some peas out of his large field which he is growing for seed (a lot of people have been picking peas there).  We went over and decided to just pick for an hour and see what we would end up with.  We got five bushels!  Our pickers are fast.  Then–we had to shell them!  We all sat around on the front porch all afternoon and evening.  I am able to shell peas almost as fast while I read as when I don’t, so I propped a book in my bowl and read aloud.  We read an entire 150-page book about a girl in Pompeii that afternoon!  The baby played on the porch around us, and 3-year-old brought drinks of water around regularly.  The afternoon was a great family time–but we didn’t finish the job till late at night, which was the not-nice part.  We ended up with 38 kilograms (57 quarts) of peas in the freezer, but I decided that is not worth repeating (unless they would be organic; these are not).