Wash Day Pea

Sometime around the Fall of 1991, a lady from Charleston, South Carolina, gave me a field pea that dated back to 1790 in her family. I met this lady at the Tennessee Valley Fair where I had an exhibition of heritage seeds on display which featured numerous food crop varieties from East Tennessee and the Appalachian regions.

As a seed saver, there are two major considerations that I apply to every variety that I collect.

First, there is the collection of a given variety, and then there is what seed savers refer to as “memory banking”.

Memory banking is the process of collecting as much information about the variety as possible, including the name of the variety, the family’s name and any noteworthy information and history pertaining to the variety – such as where it originated, how it was grown, and what its culinary applications are.

The name of the variety that the lady gave me at the fair is the “Wash Day Pea,” and it is a member of the Cowpea family. The story of the Wash Day Pea goes as follows.

The pea is small and round. It is of a yellowish-tan color with a dark brown eye. In those far-off days, wash day was an all-day affair, and the women had a hard day's work ahead of them.

Beginning at 5am, fires were built under the large iron washpots. When the water began to simmer, the soap was shaved off into the pots, clothes were added and large paddles were used to stir the clothes. There were also blocks and paddles to beat out tough stains with.

When all of this was completed, the clothing was transferred to tubs of rinse water. Finally, the clothes had to be wrung out hung out on lines to day.

Next came the part where the Wash Day Pea played its role.

After a long hard day of washing clothing, women had neither the time nor the energy left to take on the task of cooking supper. Being a small pea, the Wash Day Pea could be cooked up in the same amount of time required to make a pone of cornbread, creating a quick but delicious wash day meal.

The story of the Wash Day Pea is what brings their variety to life. Without the story that goes with it, the Wash Day Pea would be nothing more than a small pea of little interest.

– John Coykendall, Blackberry Farm Master Gardener