I've had five flowers open of the eleven starts that came up. Some starts seem to have more than one flower stalk, though, so it's unclear how many flowers I will get. I didn't notice the first flower in time to harvest from it, alas.
Now I have a dozen strands of home-grown saffron, and I can't wait to try cooking with them, and harvesting and drying more in the coming weeks!
I saw a link on one of the Facebook Anglo-Saxon groups to Matilda Holmes 2011 thesis "Food, Status and Complexity in Saxon and Scandinavian England: An Archaeozoological Approach". I've been reading it tonight and it's fascinating. One aspect of the research is seeing where the various cultures predominated geographically by analyzing the proportion of various meat animal bones in relation to each other-- the Vikings' fondness for cattle shows up in the geographic regions of the Danelaw, for example. If I wanted to set a feast in a particular time and place in England, I could use data from this thesis to make some educated guesses about what meats would be served.
Another aspect is seeing where trade and supply networks emerged, as seen by the bone records. Some affluent and urban areas have subsets of animal bones, showing that they were acquiring joints of meat rather than being a place where whole animals were butchered.
Holmes looks at the sizes of the livestock and sees that the larger, improved breeds largely shrank back to wild-like sizes after the Roman withdrawal. Larger sheep were replaced by smaller ones closer in size to the wild Soay sheep that are the domesticated sheep ancestor. Similar changes happened with cattle and swine. So much interesting stuff in this thesis!
Her research on ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matilda-Holmes/research) offers a lot of interesting potential. along these lines and others. Identifying draught cattle and the gradual switch in some places from plowing with cattle to plowing with horses-- the work makes changes in the bones that you can see in the remains. There are several papers about agriculture and foodways, which would be of interest to culinary types as well, such as Feeding Anglo-Saxon England: The bioarchaeology of an agricultural revolution.
So many interesting rabbits in this hole!!
I will be teaching a roughly one-hour class on Forgotten Vegetables and Potherbs at the September 21 University of Atlantia online, 12:30 PM PDT. Hope to see you there!
"It wasn't all just cabbages, turnips, and parsnips that got you through the winter and early spring. Skirret, orach, nettles, and purslane, and a host of other things were a vital part of many period diets. What are the glume wheats, and why were they grown so widely and then abandoned? Let's take a tour of what people were eating in England and the low countries in early period times."
In one of my other hobbies, I am a Master Gardener in Lane County, Oregon. I recently gave a brief talk at our Edible Gardening group monthly meeting on what people used to grow instead of some of our current favorites.
I wanted to see if field peas (Pisum sativum var. arvense), such as were available in period times, would grow well in Zone 8b Oregon, and whether they tasted significantly different from modern soup peas. I hope to try a number of medieval recipes that may not be well-approximated with standard dried peas. My theory is that the field peas don’t turn to mush like modern soup peas. We will see!
I chose Carlin peas as being a good equivalent for medieval peas– lots of sources of admittedly variable credibility saying they have been grown since the 12th century. Several old stories about them coming from Norway with a Captain Karlin, but nothing verified. [more work tbd]
Don’t save seeds from pods which have fully or partially twisted open. That trait will encourage pea drop and make drying pods on the vine more susceptible to harvest loss.
I have a concern that there may have been cross pollination between my super sugar snap peas and the Carlin peas. Some portion of the pods had “crowded” peas with flat sides, similar to super sugar snap. The majority of the peas were fully round and barely touching in the pod, which might be characteristic of Carlin peas. I will not save the flat-sided ones for seed, just in case.
Carlin pea update: they shelled out to a little over 2 cups, which should let me try several small-batch recipes. I saved some for next year too.
Carlin pea update: I have about half the pods off the vines now, the rest are still drying out. I started this with just 25 peas, of which only 18 sprouted and maybe 15 survived the snail attack. Peas are such a bountiful crop, returning your initial sowing manyfold.
Carlin pea update. The pods are starting to dry out! I've taken a few of the driest ones off the vine because I don't know if these peas have a habit of opening up and dropping their precious cargo. I'll be harvesting them as they dry out and checking them every day or two. It looks like we're going to get enough to make a couple of dishes and that's exciting!
Carlin pea update: yea verily, we have pods!
Carlin peas starting to bloom. They have red and white flowers, very nice.
Carlin peas update. A month after planting, they are about 15 in tall. Still look like crazy aliens with curly tentacles!
I am trying this year to grow Carlin peas, an old starch pea variety that has been used since medieval times. I've got them started and planted and I'm truly amazed by how different they look from any modern snap, snow, or shelling pea that I have seen. I feel like I'm hatching little aliens in my garden!
April 14, 2025
Planted the Carlin pea starts in one of my raised garden beds, next to a trellis.
Soaked the Carlin peas for about 30 minutes, then planted in 3-inch 4-packs, two to each cell. I only have 25 seeds!
Researched medieval peas and came up with Carlin peas as a modern equivalent. They are still grown in the UK, but seed import restrictions make it difficult to impossible to source them from overseas. Fortunately I found both US and Canadian sources. I went with an Etsy seller called “44Plants” (https://www.etsy.com/nl/shop/44Plants) and received the seeds in mid-January. Poor garden planning in 2024 meant that I had to wait until the spring of 2025 to start my project.
I also received a bonus pea called “Rejovo” that has been grown in Umbria since antiquity. I chose to only grow one of the Carlin peas at a time, keep it simple.
Prairie Garden Seeds carries Carlins, but were sold out. https://prairiegardenseeds.ca/collections/peas/products/carlin
So many of these link to each other and some links I have omitted because of gross misinformation (confusing them with the tropical cultivar “pigeon peas”, etc)
The Fat of the Land: History of Peas (super detailed info)
https://thefatofthelandblog.wordpress.com/tag/history-of-peas/
Peas (much good info on origins and development)
https://www.encyclopedia.com/food/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/peas
What’s cooking: carlin peas
https://www.susanlow.com/post/what-s-cooking-carlin-peas
The revival of the Carlin Pea
ALL ABOUT: THE QUEEN CARLIN PEA
https://boldbeanco.com/blogs/news/all-about-the-queen-carlin-pea
Grey, Black, Carling, Pigeon Peas and "Burning the Witch"
https://adambalic.typepad.com/the_art_and_mystery_of_fo/2007/02/left_maple_peas.html
Lenten Peas: Black Badgers, Parched Peas & Carlin Sunday
https://hodmedods.co.uk/blogs/news/76443973-lenten-peas-black-badgers-parched-peas-carlin-sunday
Custom revived: Carlin Peas on Carlin sunday
Wikipedia (many jumping off points to historical sources in this article; give it a nod and go to the sources)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea
Leoba's Historical Kitchen: Bohemian Peas
https://leobalecelad.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/bohemian-peas/
A Dollop of History: Pea Soup from Ein New Kochbuch 1581
https://historydollop.com/2017
