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Post by kyredneck on Sept 28, 2015 18:28:37 GMT -5
How's the best way for me to go about shelling these things? Thrash em' in a sack and winnow them? They're really easy to shell and I'm not beyond taking my time and methodically shelling them in the evening while watching shows on TV. I'm curious to hear from those that have experience with these.
This was my first year growing cowpeas and I was sort of overwhelmed with everything else when they came into the fresh shelly stage. I did manage to freeze several bags of fresh shellies but there were a whole lot more that dried on the vines such as these, Pinkeye Purple Hull, Black Crowder, and White Whippoorwill. I had difficulty with determining the perfect stage to pick them so that my Mr. Pea Sheller would function properly, especially with the Piggott Family Heirloom Pea. I would get a whole lot of 'mush' from immature peas. The pinkeyes worked the best overall with the pea sheller.
Share with this dumb hillbilly your experience with crowder peas please.  |
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Post by steev on Sept 28, 2015 19:13:30 GMT -5
I think you'll save labor if you sack 'em and whack 'em, or walk on 'em.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 28, 2015 19:29:11 GMT -5
That's some nice looking beans!
My strategy for shelling beans is typically: Pile them on a tarp. Whack them with a stick. Walk on them. Scrape the pods away from the beans. Winnow. Most commonly I thresh whole plants.
Note to self: check boots beforehand to make sure that they don't have rocks or dirt embedded in the tread. And if threshing whole plants, cut the roots off before threshing to avoid rocks and dirt clods.
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 28, 2015 20:49:04 GMT -5
Mostly what Joeseph said, but I'd say the old farmers way is a lot more fun than just walking on them; call all of your neighbors and hold a dance on them.
Also enlighten an ignorant Yankee. do those really count as crowders? I seem to recall being told a cowpea isn't a crowder pea unless the seeds are actually pushing on each other ("crowding") Those look pretty freely spaced.
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Post by jondear on Sept 28, 2015 23:04:35 GMT -5
Whereas you are working with picked pods, I'd do as steev says and put them in a pillowcase and beat the hell out of it on a picnic table or something. Pouring back and forth between two buckets on a windy day works incredibly well to get rid of the chaff.
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Post by steev on Sept 29, 2015 0:10:15 GMT -5
Re threshing, I'm always surprised by how flimsy the dry pods of longbeans are, compared to other beans, given how "tough" they are eaten green, compared to other beans.
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Post by kyredneck on Sept 29, 2015 8:03:18 GMT -5
Mostly what Joeseph said, but I'd say the old farmers way is a lot more fun than just walking on them; call all of your neighbors and hold a dance on them. Also enlighten an ignorant Yankee. do those really count as crowders? I seem to recall being told a cowpea isn't a crowder pea unless the seeds are actually pushing on each other ("crowding") Those look pretty freely spaced.
I went up on the hill and picked a few of the others:
From L to R: Black Crowder, Pinkeye Purple Hull, White Whippoorwill, Piggott Family Heirloom. Now mind you, the Piggott Pea was trellised and grown down in the bottom in superior soil, the others were primarily planted to improve some very poor soil. I'm ignorant about a lot of things but I'm REALLY ignorant about southern peas. I'd loooove for someone to enlighten me as to the differences between crowder peas, cream peas, lady peas, blackeye peas, field peas, etc. Are pinkeyes considered to be a type of blackeyes? Or are they are a class of their own?
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 29, 2015 9:15:43 GMT -5
Well, SOME of those look like crowders, at least towards the top of the right pod. I imagine that, despite the way the term is used, "crowder" is more of a phenomenon than an actual trait, some cowpeas (I'll use "cowpeas" since as a northerner, "peas" on it's own means Pisum, what you would call English peas). Some peas may be more "crowderish" (actually given where the term comes from, I suppose "crowdy" is a better word) than others, but I think that most cowpeas can make a crowder seed or two from time to time. The reverse is probably true too, a crowder may not appear to be a crowder if pollination is less than optimal and the peas are spread out (the same way dent corn kernels can go undented and "buttony" if they are unsurrounded, or how caterpillar/chenille peas (the pea equivalent to crowder) only show up when pollination is very good. I know it doesn't have anything to do with size, since I have some extremely tiny (lentil sized) cowpeas, and some of those show the most extreme crowding I have ever seen (severe enough the hilum actually gets deformed, and becomes notch-like)
As far as I can tell, black-eyed peas are just that; cowpeas whose seed coat has a black "eye" around the hilum. The others are more or less the same thing, but with the eye a different color. The are brown eyed peas, red eyed peas, orange eye peas, etc. The kind I usually grow has a mottled eye (an eye with the same sort of seed coat pattern as those on your Piggot) and I've seen speckled eye as well The base seed coat color on an eyed pea is usually white, but doesn't have to be. I've got a black eyed pea whose eye is only visible if you pick them as green peas, since the mature seed coat ITSELF is black as well. Theoretically there are probably black on red peas too, but as of yet, I've never seen one (oddly neither has anyone else I've ever asked, including Southern gardeners who have grown a lot more kinds than I ever will.)
The others are just varieties as well as far as I know. Field peas probably just means cowpeas that are tolerant enough of being crowded together as plants that growing then in a big field is feasible (with no direct proof, I might guess they also have a tendency to be closer to bush types than rambling pole types, since most field grown beans usually are, for ease of harvest. Cream and Lady are just types I think (Lady may just be a synonym for cowpea)
In short a lot of these terms probably make more sense as examples in a spectrum, rather than discrete quantities.
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Post by kyredneck on Sept 29, 2015 9:29:45 GMT -5
"....I imagine that, despite the way the term is used, "crowder" is more of a phenomenon than an actual trait..."
...ok, thanks for clearing that up.... |
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Post by kyredneck on Sept 29, 2015 10:08:51 GMT -5
...anyway, it seems to me that the Black 'Crowder' is the least 'crowded' of the four, but then again it was grown in poor soil in contrast to the Piggot Pea grown in good soil.
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Post by kyredneck on Sept 29, 2015 10:37:56 GMT -5
Re threshing, I'm always surprised by how flimsy the dry pods of longbeans are, compared to other beans, given how "tough" they are eaten green, compared to other beans. Now that you mention it, I agree. |
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Post by flowerweaver on Sept 29, 2015 10:56:40 GMT -5
As I understand it, they are all one in the same: V. Unguiculata. The name Cowpea came about because they were often grown for cow fodder, and Field Pea would also denote that use, or as a cover crop to improve soils such as the one named Iron and Clay bean. Since many have a black eye, that name was also used, as was Crowder as blueadzuki pointed out for their crowding in the shell. I've also heard them called Southern Peas, because that's where they were introduced by slaves coming from Africa. They get the name Lady Pea or Cream Pea if they are a solid white or light color because the pot liquor is considered sweet and creamy. |
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 29, 2015 11:09:19 GMT -5
Well, terms often end up getting misused, or lose their specificity and get assigned to plants that they are not really accurate for. Note how many threads there are on things like whether a given "greasy" bean is in fact greasy, or whether Texas Shoepeg is actually a shoepeg corn (I'd say no).
Also the same term can mean very different things for different crops. For common peas, "field peas" means a starchy soup pea; one suitable for growing in a field as a grain crop (as opposed to a vegetable crop), For a cowpea, the "eye" is the area around the hilum, for a soybean it's the hilum itself, so a black eyed soybean means one whose hilum is black (to make matters more confusing, I have discovered that, while rare, there ARE soybeans that have a cowpeas ring around the hilum as a seed coat pattern, and have no idea WHAT term to use for those. Also there are English peas which have black hila, so they would technically be "black eyed peas" too.)
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Post by kyredneck on Sept 29, 2015 17:04:37 GMT -5
As I understand it, they are all one in the same: V. Unguiculata. The name Cowpea came about because they were often grown for cow fodder, and Field Pea would also denote that use, or as a cover crop to improve soils such as the one named Iron and Clay bean. Since many have a black eye, that name was also used, as was Crowder as blueadzuki pointed out for their crowding in the shell. I've also heard them called Southern Peas, because that's where they were introduced by slaves coming from Africa. They get the name Lady Pea or Cream Pea if they are a solid white or light color because the pot liquor is considered sweet and creamy. Seems to me fine dinner fare like Piggott Peas or Pinkeye Purple Hulls deserve a better designation than cowpeas or field peas. Guess I'll be content with 'southern pea' (and they're not even peas to begin with). |
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Post by steev on Sept 29, 2015 18:41:31 GMT -5
P'raps you'd feel they'd get more respect if you called them "Ms Cowpeas".
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