Peas

Peas:  I was picking and shelling some peas this afternoon with some considerable help from the wife.  We plant the peas first thing in the spring and now it's may 5th and we've harvested a couple of times.  We get the seeds from fords- sugar snaps and snow peas.  I take some of the snow peas out of the package and mix them in with the sugar snaps.  I prefer the sweet peas, but my mom likes the snow peas and their plants are more vigorous and the purple flowers are nicer than the whites of the sugar snaps.
  We have a little wire fence around the pit mainly to keep the dogs out, but it serves nicely as a trellis for the peas in the spring and then beans later in the summer.  I take the little english hoe and make a little rut around the inside of the fence.  I throw the peas out pretty liberally and then cover the furrow back over with the hoe.  After a couple of weeks I thin the plants a little and then I just let them go.  spring 2012 has been pretty warm so the peas got off to a good start this year.  We've got them shelled and sitting in the fridge waiting for us to figure out what to do with them.