A Family Tradition

Landry, Reese and Gran Gran picking peas

When Landry was 2 she started helping Sandy, Shane's mom, shell black eyed peas. They would sit on the porch for hours with Granna, Shane's grandmother and Caroline, the neighbor down the street. They were all amazed at how long Landry would sit and shell. She has always had a very long attention span. Putting up peas is something that Shane's family has done for years and years. Sandy has an electric pea sheller that her mother and mother-in-law bought together when Sandy was in high school(she thinks).

10 bushels of Black eyed peas

Shane was out of town this weekend so the girls and I spent the better part of two days in Stanton. Day one included Sandy, Granna, Pa Paw, Landry, Reese, Cody(a friend of the family who has joined us many times, she is around Shane's PaPaw's age), Frankie Jo and myself. Day 2 was a repeat of people except Amanda, Jeremy's wife, replaced Cody and their 2 year old Aiden joined us.

I really took time to think about how fortunate we are to live the life we do. The girls get to do things that many kids never do like sit on the porch with their grandparents and hear stories, pick peas, see how plants grow, drive tractors, play in dirt and spend the day with their cousins getting dirty and screaming! Sometimes I think I spend too much time thinking of the things I wish I had instead of enjoying the great life I do have. It's a perfect life but is any one's?

Landry and Granna picking peas

Vivian(Granna) and her daughter Frankie Jo shelling

Pa Paw and Aiden, Shane's nephew join in the action. Pa paw and I ran the sheller behind him. Aiden was occupied with the cat.

The peas were all shelled in 2 days. The peas are cooked and then cooled. They are then put into quart sized bags and vacuum sealed and frozen. They will stay good in the freezer for a year or so. I am not sure if they will stay longer than that as ours never last beyond that time! They are so delicious and easy to prepare this way. We put in lots of work for 2 days and enjoy the fruits of our labor for the year!

After 2 days we had about 100 bags of peas in the freezer and Sandy still had 2 huge bowls of uncooked peas to blanch and freeze.

Lord, thank you for the gift of family. I so often forget to thank you for the great life You have blessed me with with. I take this life for granted so many times. We are so blessed with family that loves us and teaches us amazing lessons. I am so thankful my children are blessed with generations of hard working, faithful families. Please forgive me for taking this for granted. My children will be blessed because of the faithfulness of generations.