Funny Farmers and Turnip Tricks

Early winter is an excellent time for reflection on a New England vegetable farm.  The garden season is still fresh in a farmer's mind, and also just far enough in the past that a farmer can begin to see the humor in it.

This season, for example, we sowed three two-hundred foot beds of fall carrots, with two rows to a bed, as we normally do, to feed our nearly 100 CSA members for two or three months.  We always “mark” the carrot rows by mixing in radish seed, as radishes are such fast germinators that we can weed the rows before the carrots even come up.  Sometimes we harvest the radishes; sometimes we just weed them out.

But this year we didn't have any radish seed hanging around, so we used purple-top turnip seed instead.  Lo and behold, the darned carrots didn't germinate, but the turnips did.  Instead of lots of carrots, which most everybody loves, we had mountains of fall turnips, which most everybody  . . .  doesn't love.

We would have been happy with 250 turnips total for the CSA garden, but instead we found ourselves with over 1200 turnips.  Luckily, we do have some diehard turnip fans that were delighted with the crop, but we must admit that the first purple-top turnip does not usually bring about the same elation, as, say, the first ripe tomato of the season. 

Even the farmers have been a little daunted by the sheer number and size of the turnips this fall.  We have been searching out turnip recipes: mashed, roasted, and the favorite-lots-of-heavy-cream-and-onions-plus-a-few-token-turnips casserole.  It is our New England duty, we used to say, to eat our one purple-top turnip a year.  But now we are leaning to love our many turnips.  Or at least feel some fondness, and a good deal of familiarity, with our many turnips.

We did find a wonderful use for one of our biggest, human head-sized turnips.  Since we don't grow pumpkins, as one farmer here has a strong philosophical stance against growing decorations and not food, we found that a big ol' turnip was almost as nice as a big ol' pumpkin.  We couldn't carve it, of course, because then we would have decoration, and not food, but we made purple construction paper eyes, to match its purple top, and, the turnip had its own naturally-occurring jack-o-lanternish mouth. 

Perfect!           

And perfect for the 2014 season, too, because for years we've been waiting for Halloween to fall on one of our CSA pick-up days.  At last, to our great glee, it happened!  On Halloween, we featured our turnip jack-o-lantern, along with a fierce fanged green pepper.  We put rocks in the taters, and we switched all our vegetable labels around.  Green peppers were cabbage, tomatoes were Swiss chard, rutabagas were leeks.  Oh, we are very very funny farmers.

We had one last great trick for Halloween.  On the harvest chalkboard, we list the vegetables ready for our CSA members for the day:  Potatoes - Two lbs, Lettuce - One head, Brussels Sprouts - One stalk, Green Pepper- One, and the like. 

On Halloween we wrote “Purple-Top Turnips – Thirty.”  Oh  ha ha ha!  We farmers were rolling around on the ground with laughter, anticipating our CSA members' reactions.  Then we added in a little asterisk, referring to a note below:  “Trick or treat -- you only get three turnips!”  (Note that we didn't write: “You only have to take three turnips.”  Instead it was the enticing: “You only get three turnips!”  Subliminal message: You lucky people you!)

So very funny, so very tricky.  Plus the thought of loading thirty purple-top turnips into a bag and hauling them home was so enervating that people were relieved, delighted, jubilant, yes, celebratory about taking only three turnips home! 

And, even funnier, the next few weeks we gave out six purple top turnips per person, along with some “specialty turnips.” For some reason the turnip spirits gave us the idea that this was the perfect year to trial black, red, and yellow turnips too.

But the turnip tricks didn't end there.  We wrote it on the harvest chalkboard: “Specialty Turnips - Two.”  But guess what?  The black, red, and yellow turnips were not turnips at all.  They were really radishes! 

Oh, golly.  You'd think after close to twenty years in as vegetable farmers, we might know a turnip from a radish.  It seems like the mischievous turnip and the mischievous radish spirits were having a mighty fine time this year.

And the farmers were too, for the most part, which is a fine thing in itself, and most encouraging in a time of farm reflection.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2014

Black, Green, and Orange Halloween

On the farm we’ve got our black: our scratchy-bitey all black kitty, who is very good at hissing, especially when we suggest that he go outside, away from the warm woodstove, on a rainy fall day. We’ve also got our two black Percheron work horses, who could be mistaken for scary, if you focused on the size of their feet and teeth, rather than their charming work horsey natures.

We’ve got orange on our farm too: orange carrots and orange tomatoes and orangeish winter squash. But we haven’t got any of the Halloween orange: pumpkins, that is, which leads right to our Green Halloween.

My sweet farming spouse, generally an amiable, cheerful, easy-going fellow, has had, ever since I’ve known him, a deep philosophical argument with growing pumpkins for our CSA garden members.

“I’m not growing decoration,” he said early on, insulted at the very idea. “Look at all that food that could be grown on those pumpkin fields.” He’s gone so far in his philosophical argument, for example, as to calculate just how much potential food there is in the space it takes to grow the pumpkins for the Keene Pumpkin Festival. (Ten to fifteen thousand New Hampshire folks eating vegetables for six months!)

“We could grow some candy instead, for Halloween,” I tease him a little.

“Yeah, and grow some food coloring and high fructose corn syrup and packaging too!” My fellow is all riled up.

“But you love candy,” I point out.

“Yeah,” he grins, “Mars, Kit-Kat, Hershey’s, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. . .”

“Right, all those nice heirloom varieties.” I know his fondness both for sweets, and for growing heirloom varieties of vegetables. “How about growing a nice heirloom pie pumpkin?”

“Anything you can cook with a pumpkin you can make with butternut squash. Nobody can tell the difference. Almost all commercial pumpkin pies are made out of butternut squash,” he claims.

I remind him of my father’s story of growing up: how they carved the pumpkin Halloween day, and made pumpkin pie the next morning. “Surely back then they had really interesting rare pie pumpkins. You could rediscover a great variety.”

My spouse is nodding suddenly, excited. “Yeah, yeah, come look at this!” He takes me out to the middle of the winter squash patch, lifts a big leaf. Underneath is a little round greenish turning to orangeish something, in the midst of all the butternut and acorn and dumpling squash.

“See?” he whispers.

“Yes,” I whisper back, mystified. “But it looks like a pumpkin.”

“It is!” he whispers joyfully. “I planted one secretly! So we can carve it! On Halloween! And make a pie! The next day! Won’t that be fun?”

I shake my head, laugh. I don’t know if the secret is from me or from our young daughter, then only three, or from the world of philosophical arguments and CSA members who innocently inquire if we grow pumpkins. In any case, I give my fellow a kiss in the middle of the winter squash- secretly- growing- one- nice- heirloom- pie- pumpkin patch. We’ve got our black, we’ve got our orange, we’ve got our green.

“And in your spare time,” I add, “you could organize the great Keene Pumpkin Pie Recipe Contest, to be held the day after the great Keene Pumpkin Festival.”

“Yes! With a special category, for all local ingredients! You could get eggs, milk, cream, butter, maple syrup, the pumpkin, hmm… spices. Hey, how about dill or cilantro?” he says, as we walk past the last planting of those two herbs.

“Ooh,” I wince a little. I love pumpkin pie, my grandmother’s recipe: cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves.

“I’m not sure about winning the contest with that combination.”

“Oregano?” he says. “Marjoram? Summer savory?”

“Oof,” I say. “You’d better stick to growing pumpkins.”

“Oh no,” he says, “I don’t grow pumpkins."

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 31 - Nov 6 

Photo thanks to Rich Jacob