As a young child, I looked forward to field pea season with enthusiasm — and not just because it signaled the arrival of so many good things to eat.

It also provided an escape from the sweltering Alabama heat, as my mother's "shelling bees" were an air-conditioned affair.

LOUIE FAVORITE/AJC (ENLARGE)

Scott Peacock is executive chef at Watershed in Decatur and author of 'The Gift of Southern Cooking' (with Edna Lewis).

LOUIE FAVORITE/AJC (ENLARGE)

Whirled in a blender with smoked pork stock, chicken stock and cream, butter beans make a silken soup.

LOUIE FAVORITE/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)

Lady peas, also called white acre peas, are among the most delicate of all field peas. Cooking brings out their sweetness.

RELATED: • Fans love their field peas (and butter beans) • A guide to identifying and cooking field peas • Photos: Many varieties, all delicious • Recipes: Butter Beans in Cream, more 'WE NEED TO GO GET IN THE PEA PATCH' A story my father, Franklin Peacock, likes to tell from his childhood underscores the significance field peas once held for poor sustenance farmers in the South: "A bad thunderstorm was brewing. As the sky darkened and the thunder grew nearer, my father's mother, a nervous woman by nature, was becoming increasingly agitated. There was a young boy visiting from the farm down the road. Noticing how upset my grandmother was, he said to her: "Miz Peacock, I know what to do. We need to go get in the pea patch." "The pea patch!?!" my grandmother replied incredulously, her anxiety raised a notch. "Yeah," said the boy. "My mama's always saying how that pea patch has saved us more times than she can count."

Before this summer ritual commenced, the braided Sears, Roebuck rug in our den was rolled up, and the window unit turned to its coldest setting. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers from both sides of the family sat in a circle, their laps cradling roasting pans and Tupperware bowls filled with the harvest brought from our farm in bushel baskets.

Sharing gossip and wisdom to pass the time, they nimbly shelled for hours, tossing the empty hulls into a large galvanized washtub in the center of the room. Not yet in grade school, I apprenticed at their feet, captivated by their stories and chasing the occasional errant pea as it rolled across the floor.

This nostalgic scene, in one version or another, is no doubt familiar to many a Southerner — particularly those of a certain age. But seriously, when was the last time you sat in a shelling circle?

My guess is it's been awhile.

Labor-intensive to pick and prone to spoil, fresh field peas (and yes, that includes butter beans) are no longer the dinner-plate staple they once were, but an uncommon delicacy. And the job once done by Granny's fingers has largely been taken over by modern shelling machines.

Common varieties like black-eyed and lima beans are readily available dried or frozen — which is all well and good if you've a hankering for hoppin' John in January. But they're no substitute for farm-stand-fresh — the kinds that come in a wide array of shapes, sizes and colors, and go by many different, often idiosyncratic names such as pink eye purple hulls, calico crowders, washday cowpeas and Mississippi silver hulls. My mother's summer table always held at least one variety, and often three or more, sometimes in individual preparations, sometimes cooked together.

For years, the field pea of choice in Geneva County, Ala., where we are from, was one called "cream 8"— a small green pea similar to a white acre or lady pea. But as fashion goes, a newfangled version, "cream 40," arrived on the scene. Most of the pea-eating public took to it, but there were naysayers who complained that it was less tender and harder to cook right.

While cream 40s prevail today, my mother tells me there's a single old-timer at the edge of the county who still stubbornly grows the old cream 8s. Once they're picked, he takes them to a senior citizens center in the neighboring town, where they are hand-shelled and then sold to those pea aficionados fortunate enough to know the secret number you have to call just to get on a waiting list.

Why would someone go to so much trouble for a simple plate of peas?

My father believes that commercial shellers bruise peas and distort their flavor. My mother agrees, and is adamant that hand-shelling is supreme. "Machine shellers are rough on the peas," she says. "You get a lot of trash mixed in and worst of all, there's no snaps."

By "snaps," she means the small, immature pea pods that, too underdeveloped to shell, are "snapped" and added to the shelled peas for cooking. "Now that," my father contends, "makes a pot of peas that tastes good."

Field peas have an affinity for smoked pig; it enhances their natural meatiness while at the same time providing a contrast to their more nuanced flavors. In my view, a pot of freshly shelled peas, slowly simmered with a piece of cured pork, is as iconically Southern as fried chicken or collard greens.

At Watershed, we cook them this way every day by the bushel during their season, and serve them as part of that great regional tradition, the hot vegetable plate — where their pot likker mingles beautifully with the slow-cooked crookneck squash and thick-sliced sun-ripe tomato, just as I remember from childhood.

Field peas cooked in this manner are as classic as it gets. But you needn't stop there.

Butter beans have always been my favorite, and I love them cooked thoroughly tender, then warmed gently in a little cream with bits of country ham and thinly sliced chives. These same flavors, whirled in a blender, produce a surprisingly silken and satisfying soup.

Folding crowders into a light tomato sauce enhances their particular flavor. Tossing lady peas and pink eyes in a salad and drizzling with garlic mayonnaise brings them into the 21st century.

But for me, no matter how you cook them, they all taste like home.