[Food] Mr. Pea Sheller / Shelling peas.

hermit · Heavy Crude Joined: May 13, 2008 Posts: 184

A first-time pea grower, I bought a Mr. Pea sheller to help shell my harvest. It sucked.

I can shell faster by hand, just by feel, whereas the pea sheller needs two hands, and my eyes. It would benefit a lot from a hopper, but it's manual feed, which means I have to watch it.

Am I doing it wrong?

Are there any other devices out there, with hopper, for the mass-shelling of peas?

baha

The best shelling device I know is my girlfriend. She's twice as fast as me and looks good too. Very Happy

And, no, I won't share!
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Fishman

I have one also, hooked it to a hand mixer as they recommend also. It did fair with many mashed beans/peas. I also use it when the shelling task at hand seems overwhelming and I'm willing to lose lots of beans.

WisJim

We power ours by hand or with a cordless drill. We don't use it for fresh peas, because it crushes some, but I have been told that it works well if you freeze the peas and then run them through the sheller before they thaw completely. We use ours for dried beans and peas.

DomusAlbion

Try these guys out. Both manual and electric models.

http://www.homesteadharvest.com/peasheller.html
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hermit · Heavy Crude Joined: May 13, 2008 Posts: 184

allenwrench · Intermediate Crude Joined: Apr 23, 2008 Posts: 893

How much peas does one need to plant to make it worthwhile for 3 people? I planted a test area about 3 x 4 feet and it barley made enough to get a couple of meals from. Seems you need to use large areas to get some quantity.

And what about trellis? Seems a hassle. Or can you get by loading up a rectangle bed with packed peas and running a t post wire around the edge of the bed to hold the thing together?

hermit · Heavy Crude Joined: May 13, 2008 Posts: 184

hermit · Heavy Crude Joined: May 13, 2008 Posts: 184

As an experiment, I left half of my peas on the vine, for drying, and soupmaking later.

They dried well, but I'm looking for labor saving tips on the best way of threshing of the vines/peas to get the dried peas out.

Any suggestions?