[Granville-Hough] 21 Apr 2009 - Peas and Goobers

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

Field Peas and Hog Goobers and Chufas

There were two legumes we used which Aunt Nannie (Keyes) Kennedy said 
came from South Carolina with the Miller family. She have learned about 
them from her grandfather, Hiram Miller, when she was a child growing up 
in Sullivan’s Hollow with Ben Keyes, Hiram Miller, and Frank Hough. The 
first was field peas, which were planted in the corn fields at lay-by 
time between the rows of corn. The corn would have the plant nutrients 
it needed until September, then the peas would grow along until frost in 
November. We loved to eat these fall field peas, and we planted some 
member of the “crowder” family, far more tasty than the black-eyed peas 
supposed to be a Southern specialty. We gathered the corn in October, 
then turned the hogs into the fields to harvest any peas or corn we had 
missed. The pea plant was also a legume which added nitrogen to the 
soil. As there was no commercial fertilizer available, this nitrogen, 
and any available cow manure were used to enhance yields. Though in my 
time we also used commercial fertilizer, we still followed these 
practices until about 1935, when we started using vetch and other more 
winter “cover crops” to add nitrogen.
The other legume we used was a variety of peanuts which we called hog 
goobers. This variety had seedpods which was large and heavy with oil, 
and they broke off in the earth when you pulled up the plant. With the 
typical varieties of peanuts, you pull up the plant and you have the 
peanut pods clustered together, and you simply pick them off the plant. 
For this variety, you had to plow up the plants, or turn the soil, in 
the same way we gathered sweet potatoes or Irish potatoes. Or we could 
let the hogs do the work of gathering. Hogs could find those goobers as 
readily as they find truffles in France or Italy. And they got fat on them.
There must have been other techniques of farming swampland which Hiram 
Miller inherited from his SC forefathers. For one thing, it is said he 
was one of the leading rice growers in Smith County and on Ocohay Creek. 
The agricultural censuses of 1850 and 1860 confirm this. My grandfather 
Richardson also spoke of growing rice for home consumption on Upper 
Cohay. My father never grew any, nor do I remember him discussing it. So 
the growing of rice was forgotten some time before 1900.
We like to experiment with unusual plants, and one which was quite 
successful was chufas. We got the chufa nuts and planted them on a sandy 
hillside, and they continued to grow there each year until we placed 
that field in a pasture. The chufa is an African plant of the sedge 
family, and the raisin size nuts are brown and bumpy and taste like 
chestnuts. You have to pull up the whole plant and find the nuts among 
the roots. In Spain and Mexico, they are used as a base for a drink, 
HORCHATA. They must be ground up or soaked in some way we did not know. 
When dried, they will last a year in a refrigerator. Of course, we had 
no electricity and just ate the chufas as a snack. It was difficult to 
get all the grains of sand off the chufas, and I remember them as 
crunchy with grains of sand. I believe the chufa nuts are also known as 
earth almonds, earthnuts, or tiger nuts. Next time I am near a Hispanic 
food outlet, I will look for Horchata, and for chufas.