Thursday, July 11, 2013

Pea Picking Time!

I had a couple of extra hours....why not?  Fellow Maine business Northern Girl had a project.  They needed help picking peas and the pea patch was only 3 minutes from my house!  I volunteered, I showed up, I picked peas!  They are working hard to bring back commercial Peas to Maine and created The Pea Project.  The pea patch we picked today was a test patch.   They have more test patches up North, where they are located, but the farmers on New Leaf Farm here in Durham offered to plant this test patch for them.  So peas needed to be harvested and the call was put out for volunteers.  We were "paid" in peas!
 
I enjoyed myself.  We picked whole plants so it was very easy to just pull up the plants.  It has been pretty wet here lately, so I my boots, jeans and hands were covered in a good layer of mud when I finished.  And I have never worked on a farm or picked more than a few tomatoes off my garden plants before.  7 rows of lots and lots of peas and my body felt it even thought I tried not to do the lean over and more of the squat and pick. 
 
Here are some pictures from my morning of picking peas.
 
We picked over 10 large black garbage bags chock full of pea plants.

 
A foggy morning at the pea patch.  BUT that meant no hot sun beating down on us.

 
My dirty hands and a handful of pea plants.

 
My fellow pickers!  That is Chris on the right and he is the general manager.  He drove over 4 hours down to Durham from "up in the County" to supervise the pea picking.

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