Here’s the numbers. I sent five men out into the field. They harvested 16 cabbage sacks of fresh green black eyed peas. I paid each of the five $60 for their effort. The men harvested the peas as I directed—the way we would harvest them for home consumption—mostly semi-ripe peas for shelling with an occasional snap or green pea in the mix. $60 X 5 = $300.

I'd been told that fresh black eyed peas are selling for $28/bushel. But they’re not. They’re selling for $28 per cabbage sack and right on the sack it says each bag contains 1-3/4 bushel by volume. $28 a sack is what vendors at the produce stands in Luling sell them for. They pay $24 per bag from a man in San Antonio. My guess is that those peas come from Mexico where labor is cheaper. And the men at the produce market rarely if ever sell a whole bag at a time. They’d make no money if they did.

16 cabbage sacks of peas X $24/bag = $384. Not good, but a profit, nonetheless, if you don’t count the cost of plowing, planting, cultivating, hoeing, two applications of chelated iron, one application of liquid Sevin for beetles and grasshoppers, and one application of Malathion for a horrible infestation of aphids that would have wiped the crop out entirely had not we noticed it and worked on a Sunday to spray the damned things. I don’t count the cost because the money is already spent. I have peas in the field and they’re worth no money if I don’t get them to market.

I give Urlit 8 bags to sell and take 8 bags to the produce man in Luling. I leave the peas on credit at $22/bag instead of the customary $24/bag in order to earn the men’s business. A few hours later I call the man in Luling to discover that his pea shelling machine won’t properly shell the peas due to the green snaps in the mix. I pick them up and sort through them, and save the snaps for the milk cow.

The next day only four pea pickers return. Given new instructions on how to pick, no snaps included this time, they pick only 8 sacks of peas. It’s harder to find just-right-for-shelling peas—those that aren’t too green or too dry for an automatic shelling machine. 4 pickers X $60 cost me $240. 8 sacks of peas at $22/ sack sell for $176.

By now I know this equation isn’t working. I tell the men to return the next day and I go to the field to pick alongside the men, thinking perhaps they may have been slacking on the job. To a man, they out-picked me yet we ended up with similar results by the end of the day. It cost more to pay the men than the harvested peas will bring at the market.

I allowed the men to finish the week, harvesting fresh black eyed peas. I knew I’d take a loss but I continued to allow them to work because they all need jobs and money to pay the bills. Basic bills. Rent, car, food, clothing. They have children. Most had been employed in the construction business. That work has died on the vine. None of them get counted in the current unemployment figures. I have a little money at my disposal.

I lost money on their pea picking efforts, mighty as they were. But oddly enough, the men paid their way but in a way I hadn’t anticipated. One afternoon as they were preparing to go home, a rain shower approached. I had square bales of hay in the field and was picking them up as fast as I could, by myself. The men stopped and offered to help. They were hot, tired, and wanted to go home to a bath, a hot meal and a comfortable bed but they stopped to help, nonetheless. Martin hooked a large gooseneck trailer to a pickup. One group helped him load, another of the men helped me load. In less than thirty minutes we picked up 375 bales of hay and made it back to the protective cover of a barn. The first drops began to hit the windshield as the last bales were loaded on the trailers. That night it rained 3.5 inches. The 200+ bales that remained in the field is now worth about $4/bale as cow hay. The hay we got to the barn in prime condition is worth $5.50/bale because it's horse quality hay. The difference: 375 bales X $1.50/bale = $562.50.

So, I have a bunch of sacks of peas. More than the local market can bear. I call a early twenty-something nephew of my wife; he and a friend drive out to shell peas. Both of the young men are unemployed but neither is receiving unemployment benefits, hence neither is counted in official unemployment figures released by the government. They have rent to pay—my wife’s nephew needs to get his car inspected, both have this habit of eating each and every day.

Glen Zumwalt loaned me a pea sheller that works something like a ringer washer. Insert a pea in one end, the rollers suck it through. Shelled peas drop out below; spent husks come out the other end. I’ve heard shelled peas sell for $5/pound, perhaps even more. I’m thinking these young men can shell the peas, rent a stall at an Austin farmer’s market and sell them. They arrive around noon and shell peas until 6 pm. The take at the end: they’ve shelled 16 pounds.

So, if the peas are free, and 10 hours of labor at $7.50 an hour produces 16 pounds of shelled peas worth $5/pound at the market in Austin, it cost me $75 to have the peas shelled and they are worth $80. I pay the young men plus an extra $20 for gasoline and keep the peas for our own pantry. At this rate we may soon have no money, but we won’t be going hungry, good Lord willing.

And someone somewhere, perhaps a number of someones, are eating peas today you probably can’t buy in your grocery store, because the economics of growing and harvesting fresh peas for the market doesn’t work.

Now the question remains: Do I call the men after the current rain event passes to continue picking peas?