Summer’s bountiful harvest almost makes heat and gnats bearable

'No shell-ee, no eat-ee!" was Mother's summertime mantra

Every year about this time, I ask myself the same question: What the hell am I still doing here?

There comes a point, overnight it seems, that someone turns on the steam, and then wanders off and forgets about it for six months. People talk about getting outdoor chores done “before the heat of the day,” but if you step outside after 7 a.m., the heat of the day is already well on its way.

I abhor hot weather. I tend to sweat like crazy, and despite living most of my life in the Deep South, raised in a home without air conditioning for years, and schools without AC until 10^th grade, I have never gotten accustomed to it.

Then there are the bugs. In the daytime, hordes of gnats try to wriggle their way into your eyes, ears, and nose. In the evening, gnats give way to mosquitoes in even greater numbers. I am a magnet for both, unfortunately. Then there are the more devious dangers on the wing, like no-see-ums and biting horseflies, hornets, yellowjackets, bees, and some unidentifiable flying stingers, as well as fire ants, blessedly earthbound.

I dread the heat more than I fear the bugs, or even the snakes. Within minutes of going outside, my shirt dampens; before long I am wet to the skin: my shirt, shorts, underwear, socks, belt, and even my watchband are as sodden as if I’d just fallen into a lake.

That’s no way to live.

But every year about this time, I settle the question with the same two-word answer: fresh vegetables.

Decades ago, I was far less enthusiastic about the summer’s bounty, primarily because it meant being corralled into the back seat of my mother’s 1956 Chevrolet Bel-Aire and hauled out to the hinterlands for vegetables. That meant trudging into the fields with a bucket and picking until we had hampers full of whatever caught Mother’s attention — white peas, black-eyed peas, purple hulls, butterpeas, butterbeans, squash, and other delights of the soil. We’d get white corn, yellow corn, sweet corn, and, if fortune smiled upon us, Silver Queen. Those were already picked, thank goodness, as were sacks full of fresh okra.

We’d be frogmarched from the back seat of the Bel-Aire straight to the aluminum-and-webbing chairs arranged under the carport. Mother would go inside and return with plastic tubs and paper sacks from the IGA. She’d plop a tub in our laps, overfill it with vegetables, and then snap open the paper sacks for the husks.

We’d load up the Chevy and head back to town. Mother would be elated by acquisition of the bounty, but we kids would be in the blackest of moods, as if we were being taken to the gallows. As bad as picking beans and peas was, shelling them was the ultimate torture.

There was no respite when we reached Deborah Street. We’d be frogmarched from the back seat of the Bel-Aire straight to the aluminum-and-webbing chairs arranged under the carport. Mother would go inside and return with plastic tubs and paper sacks from the IGA. She’d plop a tub in our laps, overfill it with vegetables, and then snap open the paper sacks for the husks.

Soon the gnats would arrive, followed by flies. Then would come the sweat, followed by the mosquitoes. Mother would sit outside, too, and visit with a neighbor while we young’uns did all the dirty work. Any protest was met with Mother’s sing-song mantra: “No shell-ee, no eat-ee!”

Butterbeans were the worst. Something about the texture of the husks was abrasive to the skin, and before the hamper was emptied, our little hands would be rubbed raw, not to mention sore thumbnails.

One summer on the vegetable run, I spied an odd contraption underneath the market’s pavilion, a homemade tumbler made of plywood and hardware cloth. An automotive belt connected the tumbler to a motor mounted near the floor. I wandered over and asked one of the farm guys what it was.

“That’s a sheller,” he said. “You dump a hamper of peas or butterbeans in there and turn it on, and in a little while the beans or peas will be in that hopper underneath, and all the husks will be in the tumbler.” He said they’d shell our bounty for an extra dollar per hamper.

I checked my pockets and came up with two dollars I’d gotten by picking up Coca-Cola bottles and turning them in for the deposits. So I swaggered up to my mother, who was paying for the vegetables we’d harvested. Mustering the most grown-up self-confidence I could, I held out the wrinkled bills in my sweaty hand. “Here, Mama, I’ll pay for the shelling.”

The clerk perked up. “Oh, y’all want them shelled? That’s awful sweet, sonny boy,” she said.

“No, not today,” Mother said cheerily. The she turned to me and growled, “Put that back in your pocket.”

On the drive home, Mother explained that “those shellers just beat up the vegetables.

“You don’t get as much of a yield, and what you do get is broken and bruised.”

In other words, I thought, why pay for a mechanical sheller when you have free shellers at your command at home?

At the time, I was only vaguely aware of what transpired between the onerous carport shelling torment and a mound of peas on my plate at the supper table. The summer after I finished college, I endeavored to “put up” those peas I loved to eat but hated to shell. I bought a hamper of shelled white peas in a big Ziplock bag at the IGA, and took them back to the tiny kitchen in my rental apartment. I thought I knew what to do and how to do it: wash ‘em; “look” ‘em; blanch ‘em; and then freeze ‘em. Nothin’ to it.

The peas had mounded up at the top of the pot like a Jiffy-Pop popcorn container. I was admiring the uniform symmetry of the protuberance when a crack appeared at the top of the mound. Before I could take a step closer to investigate, a steaming column of water, peas, and what I can only describe as pea scum gushed from the chasm like a volcanic eruption.

I washed the peas, even though they didn’t look like they needed washing. I “looked” them, even though I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for. Then I got a big pot and dumped in the peas, filled the pot with water, and put it on the stove. My plan was to bring them to a boil for about half a minute, then dump them in a colander and pour ice water on them before filling as many quart-size Ziplock bags as needed and put them in the freezer.

Somewhere along the line, I failed to recognize the nuances of the process. It was smooth sailing until I put the pot on to boil. Nothing seemed to be happening. So I turned up the heat, and started doing something else. About 10 minutes later, I stepped into the kitchen to check the progress of my blanching.

The pot still hadn’t boiled but the kitchen was warmer, so I knew the stove was working. There’d been a slight change with the pot, however — the peas had mounded up at the top of the pot like a Jiffy-Pop popcorn container. I was admiring the uniform symmetry of the protuberance when a crack appeared at the top of the mound. Before I could take a step closer to investigate, a steaming column of water, peas, and what I can only describe as pea scum gushed from the chasm like a volcanic eruption. I managed to grab a pot holder and move the vessel from the red-hot burner, then turned off the stove.

The geyser left peas and grayish scum all over the kitchen, stuck to the cabinets and the ceiling and the refrigerator. Oddly, there wasn’t much water. I took the pot from the stove and emptied it into the colander, then poured ice water over a greatly diminished quantity of peas. I think I got two quart bags from my hamper of peas. Then I started to clean up the kitchen.

I should have started sooner. The pea scum would have been much easier to wipe up if I’d done it before it dried, but after a couple of hours of scrubbing, the kitchen was back to normal. Or so I thought; I continued to find desiccated peas up until I moved out.

That was my first and last attempt to put up peas. Instead, I wake up early on Saturday and head to the farmers’ market, gnats be damned. I have my favorite trusted vendors and I spend like a drunken sailor — cantaloupe, peas, corn, tomatoes, butterbeans, pickles, bread, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I’m so enamored with Mrs. Throckmorton’s Cajun Pickles that I once kept an emergency stash of six jars on the top shelf of the bathroom cabinet.

For lunch today, Bettye cooked the fresh corn, fresh white peas, and added sliced turkey breast. She’d made a bowl of sliced cucumbers in a dill and sour cream sauce especially for me, and I finished off the meal with several grapes and fresh cherries. No sweat, no gnats, no mosquitoes, no raw fingers — just manna from heaven.

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