pea seed harvest

so it is seed harvest time for some of my early spring crops,
the peas have done there job, they were good,
I left the best pods on the plants to finish all the way to dry to save seeds from (so I will get the best seeds for next year, never eat the best ones, save for seeds)
the birds ate all my seeds on the first try planting this year, so I borrowed seeds form my dad,
put chicken wire over the rows and tried again, so after growing them I am getting ready to return more than I borrowed and have a backup of my own.

the real trick is to let them dry a long time before doing anything
I let the pods dry till they are brittle (and thus easy to open)
then take the seeds out of the pods and let them dry for another 2 weeks or months
if any extra moisture is left in the seeds it can hurt them in storage
so a paper envelope will let that extra out and are the safest storage if saving seeds just till the next year as they let you mess up quite a bit and still be ok.

good luck saving seeds from your plants.
more on seed saving if you want to look
http://www.seedsave.org/issi/issi_904.html
http://realseeds.co.uk/seedsavinginfo.html
http://www.nativeseeds.org/resources/seedsaving
http://survivingthemiddleclasscrash.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/how-to-harvest-process-and-store-vegetable-seeds/