Peas were always ‘pays’ where I grew up. Beans always ‘b’yuns’. This is a blog post about pays.
It begins one day in early summer in the late sixties when I noticed that for some reason dad hadn’t planted any peas. This was unusual. At that time dad grew almost all the vegetables we ate – he had a large allotment as well as our garden, and up until then planting and picking the peas in early summer had been one of the pegs that the year swung round, along with lifting new potatoes, picking strawberries and soft fruit, the arrival of runner beans – a real treat at first until you grew sick of their appearance at every meal – and on into winter with sprouts after the first frost, leeks and purple sprouting broccoli (the list is indicative not exhaustive…)
It mattered that peas had dropped out of the pattern. Suddenly a beat in the rhythm of our year was missing.
I asked dad why and he answered that it’s wasn’t worth it anymore. ‘Frozen peas’ he said, ‘taste as good if not better than fresh. And you can eat them year round’.
I was shocked. This was heresy. In our house it was axiomatic that fresh was best and home grown best of all. And on top of that we lived in Evesham, heart of market gardening in the Midlands. At the edge of town orchards and fields of vegetables stretched for miles in every direction.
Almost everyone was involved in growing, tending and picking the produce. It was a regular morning sight to see a flat bed lorry, small tin hut on the back, picking up women from their homes for a day in the fields, pea picking. For us kids too, picking was a good source of extra money. You could sign up on the edge of a field, pick as many nets as you could manage and go home with cash in hand. (I pass quickly over the time I took my youngest sister with me to show her the ropes, full of big brother swagger, and was humbled when her nimble fingers outpicked mine…)
So the suggestion that frozen might trump fresh was radical. I didn’t realise it at the time but dad’s capitulation to Captain Birds Eye was just one of the straws blowing in a very strong wind. Up until the 1960s the route vegetables took to the table was, first, from small grower to local market: Evesham had two in those days. Buyers would bid for the offerings and send them by rail and on lorries to the big city markets where greengrocers would go to fill their shelves ready for housewives to buy.
By the end of the sixties supermarkets and food processors were beginning to assert themselves. Whole crops were sold on contract and carried off for processing direct from the field. Without buyers local markets withered, small growers had no outlet and, in the end, even the greengrocers pulled down their shutters. By the start of the new century Evesham, still surrounded by its fields and orchards, had no local greengrocer left.
At home while we did gain in the flavour and availability of our peas we also lost that small sense of excitement when the first peas were picked and eaten and we lost one small household ritual as well: we no longer sat, colander in front of us, pile of pods by our side, shelling peas companionably for Sunday dinner.
I was thinking about all this because of a Substack newsletter that came a little while ago. It’s written by the writer, Jane Brocket, and is called Yarnstorm. It’s weekly and it’s arrival every Sunday is always a treat. I’ve stolen both illustrations from it for this post. She has her own pea related stories and memories and more illustrations as well. It’s well worth following the link.
a boy's head 