Chino Farm’s roadside stand, The Vegetable Shop (6123 Calzada del Bosque, Rancho Santa Fe, California; 858-756-3184), is open Monday through Saturday, 10a.m. to 4:30p.m., and Sunday, 10a.m. to 1p.m. Closed Monday in winter.
Tatums’ Produce: This is pea heaven
Vivian Tatum and her husband, Buck, work 150 acres of land just north of Montgomery, Alabama, near the community of Pine Level. Their gray-and-white trailer home sits at the center of the family compound. Buck’s mother lives here. So do two of the Tatums’ four children and a host of grandchildren.
“I married Buck back in 1965,” says Vivian. “That was the last year his daddy planted cotton. We stick with vegetables now, like the truck farmers who used to drive their pickups from house to house, selling corn and beans off their tailgates.”
In addition to butter beans and corn, watermelons and potatoes, Tatum raises lady peas, the delicate, bisque-white beauties that some folks call cream peas. What’s more, the auburn-haired 51-year-old is a font of pea lore, willing and able to hold forth on the relative merits of lady creamers and their kissing cousins, the earthy and ubiquitous black-eyed and the sweeter pink-eyed.
Tatum is a woman of strong opinions. Given the least bit of prodding, she’ll tell you that, no matter the variety, “hand-shelled peas are best.” She says this not because of some precious predilection for doing it the old-fashioned way, but because shelling-machine paddles are likely to bruise the peas, causing them to shed their hull and, as a result, absorb too much liquid when cooking.
On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings, she works her stall at the Montgomery Curb Market. In continuous operation since 1927, the market is a vestige of yesteryear, an open-air cinder-block shed lit by dangling bare bulbs and topped by a tin roof. Because only local farm-grown goods can be sold here, it’s also one of the best produce spots in the Deep South. That’s Tatum’s booth near the back right corner, the one with the sign that welcomes customers to “pea heaven.” Stop by on a summer day, and you’ll have your pick of bushel after bushel of sweet corn, with some of the ears incised in a windowpane fashion so that you can see just how plump the white kernels are. Tubs and tubs of speckled butter beans and calico crowders are there, too. And, of course, lady peas—Lord, the peas. If you ask for the ones Tatum shelled by hand, she’ll nod her approval and charge you a premium of 50 cents per pound. —John T. Edge
Tatums’ Produce has a stall at the Montgomery Curb Market (1004 Madison Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama; 334-263-6445), open Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, 5:30a.m.to about 1:30p.m. Lady peas are also available at many farmers markets throughout the South and by mail order, in season, from Tatums’ Produce (334-361-1569).
Pinterest
