Mustard or Mayo

Yesterday I cooked up a pot of purple hull peas for supper.   Washing and sorting the peas brought back memories of long ago summer mornings spent sitting in the kitchen floor, a large bowl between my short legs, shelling purple hull peas.  Purple hulls, as they were called, were a staple in our house.   If Mother could find a spot for a little garden there would always be a little room for the purple hulls along with Daddy's tomatoes.  I have to smile when I think of all the peas that went flying through the air, either by accident or purposefully aimed at my older brother who was himself quite adept at shooting and hitting his target...me.

I poured the vegetable broth into my pot of peas.   I chopped the garlic, onion and jalapeño adding each one just as the pot began to boil.  I turn down the burner and walked out to the herb garden to cut a bit of thyme to throw into the mix and found myself remembering a different kind of garden of years ago.

My Dad was a career military officer serving 32 years in the Army.  He would tell you the Army was his life, but I suspect in his heart he wanted to be a farmer.  Mother and Daddy owned a small house in town, but often in the quiet of the night talked of being out where there would be space to put in a real garden, and pasture for horses and cows.  For awhile Daddy would have to be content with being a city farmer.  The dream of a real farm would have to wait until he retired.

Hank and Helen were Mother and Daddy's closest friends.  They owned, what seemed to my young eyes,  a very big piece of land in the country.  They had a few horses, maybe some cows and a really great old barn with a hayloft just meant to be the best playroom.   I don't know when or why but together  these friends came up with a plan to put in a large vegetable garden out and behind Hank's house.  Everyone would work and gather their share of the bounty.  The year was probably around 1959; I was just five, not yet in school.  (That sounds like a really long time ago, doesn't it?  It wasn't so long ago.)

The garden would need to be plowed and tended on the weekends as both men had full-time jobs other than working a field.  I still remember the Louisiana heat on that first Saturday morning.  Daddy and Hank hooked up a mule to the plow and began digging up the hard dry ground.  There were some stops and starts at the beginning.   I can't imagine why they used a mule and plow.   It may have had something to do with not being able to start the tractor, I can't remember.  Mother and Helen helped with raking out the weeds before retreating inside to prepare the noon meal.  The four of us children (I the youngest by three years) hung around the fence line watching the mule pull the plow up and down stirring up clouds of dust and sending it in our direction, which when settled and mixed with our sweat covered and caked on us like sweaters two sizes too small.

By noon the lot was cleared and plowed.  Everyone cleaned up for dinner and a rest during the heat of the day.    When I woke from my nap the other children had already escaped to play in the barn and hayloft.  I found the  grown-ups back in the field working.  Even parallel lanes had already been plowed the length of the new garden.  Evening would soon be approaching; it was time to put in the plants and seeds.  I remember walking out across the newly plowed field and the warm sandy dirt piling up around and into my shoes with every step.  Daddy giving me the look of "don't mess up our rows".  Mother would hand me seeds and tell me what would grow from each one.

There would be onions, tomatoes, corn, okra, squash, pole beans, cucumbers, turnip and mustard greens, and yes, there would be plenty of purple hull peas to shell.  These were the fresh vegetables we knew, everything else either came from a can or the freezers and vegetable bins at the Piggly Wiggly.  

Each Saturday we would jump in the blue Ford, drive down the back graveled roads and out in the country to check on our vegetable garden.  I'm not for sure how the chores were divided, but there was always watering and weeding needing to be done, and Daddy simply loved being out there.  Mother and Helen would have a chance to visit.  My brother and I were allowed to play and run wild with our friends.

 On the way home we would stop at the Mennonites egg farm for our eggs.  I didn't like the smell very much, but I always wanted to go inside and watch Mr. Smith take each brown egg and examine it under his bright light before placing it in the carton.   I remember asking him one time why he looked at the eggs under a lamp.  He said, "Oh I just want to make sure it is the perfect egg for your breakfast".  Neither my brother nor I were allowed to hold the eggs.  We were apt to lay them down on the seat next to us and knock them off during one of our sibling scuffles or drop them accidentally.  They always made the ride home when securely held in Mother's lap.

That summer was measured in the number of trips we made down those dusty country roads to the country farmer's place.  Sometimes our garden chores had to be scheduled around my brother's ball games or Daddy's out-of-town travels, but the chores were always completed.  The summer disappeared and it was time to start picking, shelling and putting up in the freezer.  And, time for me to start First Grade.

On one of the last days to harvest I was following Daddy and Hank through the rows.  Like all children I always had a question needing an immediate answer.  During our question and answer session, Daddy reached down and pulled up clump of turnip greens.  Along with the greens came a big purple and white round thing.   I ask him what it was and he told me it was a turnip, "kind of like a spicy potato".  We continued walking down the row.  As we progressed he stopped pulling and began chopping greens off at the ground.  I ask if we had collected our share of turnips; he told me he was no longer pulling up turnip greens, he was cutting the mustards.

Walking back to the car with the city farmer and the country farmer I started thinking (not always a good thing to have a five year old thinking), I stopped, looked up and said, "Hank, I don't really like mustard.  I think I want to plant some mayonnaise greens next year".

Daddy reached down and swung me onto his shoulders as he answered,  "Let's wait and see what next year brings".

Daddy did realize his dream of owning a farm.  He retired from the Army four years later just I was entering the fifth grade.   He spent the six months before returning to work adding onto and remodeling the old farmhouse.  By the beginning of the next summer he put in his own garden.  A little over ten years ago he sold his acreage and moved to his wife's farm.  Until last year when he became ill he was still growing tomatoes and turnip greens.  He still enjoys riding around on his twenty eight year old John Deere tractor.

There were plenty of purple hulls left over for my supper tonight.   Now had I just made a bit of cornbread!

Bon Appetit!