Friends’ Marketplace sells a lot of Eastham turnips — more than you might imagine for a humble root vegetable. “They’re starting to go through over 200 pounds of our turnips per day,” reports Judy Scanlon, one of the premier growers of the heirloom seed strain. “That will only increase the closer we get to Thanksgiving. There will be a few days when they go through 500 pounds a day at the peak of what I call ‘Turnip Madness.’ So, no rest for us pulling turnips for the next few weeks.”
For Scanlon and her husband, Sig Winslow, last year was their biggest harvest: around 10,000 pounds of turnips grown and sold mostly to Friends’. The couple also sell their turnips at their Lake Farm Gardens farmstand on Monument Road in Orleans and at the Orleans Farmers Market on Saturdays.
Scanlon reports that, unlike other edible roots that at larger sizes can get woody, an Eastham turnip keeps its flavor even if it weighs 20 pounds. And they’re sweet enough that local schoolkids have taken an interest.
“We just gave 235 pounds of the big ones to the Nauset school system,” says Scanlon. “They made turnip fries, and the kids ate them all up.”
This Saturday’s annual Eastham Turnip Festival kicks off at 10 a.m. at the public library on Samoset Road. One of the main events is a contest to guess the weight of a giant turnip, which Scanlon grows each year. In the fall, she marks possible contenders, “the biggest of the big,” with a stake in her one-acre turnip field. She says she knows which one it will be this year. Last year’s champion turnip weighed 19 pounds, 2 ounces.
Other featured festival events include the blessing of the turnips, the Wampanoag Nation Singers and Dancers, crafts, storytelling, an antique tool exhibit and forge demonstration, tours of the Eastham windmill, more live music, kids’ games, and juggling.
Eastham turnips carry within their unassuming exteriors a long lineage of local lore. “Historically, in this area, turnips were grown in the fall and asparagus in the spring,” says Scanlon. “That’s going way back in Cape history.” Early growers included the “turnip king,” Art Nickerson, the Brackett family, and David and Esther Raphaelson. The Raphaelsons are the farmers who first gave Scanlon her turnip seeds.
Scanlon has shared the seeds with other growers even if they could be thought of as competitors. “Farmers are generous people,” she says. “Cape Cod Organic Farm grows them from seeds I gave them. And Bob Wells in Eastham, too. It’s an heirloom that should be preserved and enjoyed, so other people need to grow it.”
All the seed can be traced back to rooted cuttings taken from turnips bought in Eastham decades ago. Wells will be sharing turnip growing tips at the festival this year.
“People can get hung up on the name ‘Eastham’ and they think if the turnip isn’t grown here, it’s not authentic or something,” says Scanlon. Because so much farmland on the Cape has been lost to development, she now grows her turnips 80 miles away in Westport, where she found the acreage the large plants require.
“It’s the seed,” she says, “not where it’s grown, that makes it an Eastham. How it tastes is what’s important.”
Brussels sprouts and Swiss chard everywhere would certainly concur.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on Nov. 21, incorrectly identified one of the people pictured washing turnips in Judy Scanlon’s drying shed. She is Leslie Nelson, not Jody Johnson.
Turning Up
The event: Eastham Turnip Festival and Taste of Turnip Day
The time: Saturday, Nov. 23, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The place: Eastham Public Library, 190 Samoset Rd.; Taste of Turnip Day menus served at over two dozen local restaurants; see easthamturnipfestival.com
The cost: Free
