Pea season
Garden vegetables are maturing and it is possible to eat your way through the patches of carrots and peas.
Nothing tastes better than a handful of peas opened in the garden and eaten right there.
When you’re young, your stomach is like a bottomless pit and a good country garden makes for excellent foraging. Mind you, if the family cook has an eye on peas for freezing or canning and the best ones have been downed by the voracious young fry, an explosion might be expected.
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My parents had a way of dealing with garden raiders.
“Since you’re in the garden anyway, take the hoe and get at those weeds.”
Weeding gardens was not our favorite pastime. My father’s cultivator cut weeds between the rows, but those that grew between the vegetables had to be pulled by hand.
To cure boredom, Canada thistle judiciously applied to a nearby sibling could create a dandy row and that would bring a parent out to deliver lecture No. 5.
Garden produce made up an important part of our winter reserve of canned goods. My mother used to figure if she had 100 quarts of canned food on our basement shelves and a bin of potatoes, carrots, parsnips and turnips, we were ready for winter.
Those canned goods included jellied chicken, peas, pickled beets and cucumbers, saskatoons, rhubarb, peaches and apricots, jams, jellies and relish.Canning over a hot stove on hot August days was an ordeal but highly necessary. When harvest started canning had to stop.
Let’s stop rambling and grab a carrot. You use the top to get rid of the mud.
