Bringing In The Peas

Blue – podded  “blauwschokker” peas also known as capucijner (cap u see ner) peas

…it has two different colors of flowers, pink/purple type and a more bluish/purple type…

bluish/black pods, at this young stage they can be eaten just like snow peas or sugar snap peas

or you can leave them on the vine..

to fully mature

and then tear down those vines

harvest the fully mature pea pods…

and have your kids help you shell the peas

and then feed the vines to the goats (goats LOVE pea vines)…

and then use about 1 pound of those peas, which range from fully mature to fully dried (the darker ones are fully dried)..

and fresh snap beans from the garden, yellow and green, finely chopped..

along with meat from a young rooster, killed a few days ago and cooked until falling apart and making it’s own delicious broth, the meat very finely diced into the soup in order to make it more tender (rooster is tasty but tough)…

combined with fresh broth from the young rooster, let it all cook down for several hours, and you have Pea and Bean Rooster Soup! 😀

This will be our third year growing these peas, we’ve saved seeds from each year to grow the next year.  This year we harvested about 3 pounds of peas, our most ever!  These are super easy to grow and make for a VERY tasty soup, not at all “pea like” but more like a bean with a very meaty rich taste, most of the peas retain their shape when cooked but some cook down completely and help thicken and intensify the flavor of the soup.  This pea is a Dutch heirloom and I am Dutch along with German and  Scottish so I am always looking to grow heirloom vegetables from these cultures and peas do very well in our climate.  Not to mention the fact that they are SO BEAUTY FULL, they have very quickly become a favorite of ours, one that we plan to grow every year.  This is a VERY OLD pea, originally grown by the Capuchin monks in Flanders, Europe during the 1500’s!