Eastham Turnip Festival
FEELIN’ VEGGIE
Turnip Love Brings Musicians Back Together
The Higher Ground String Band will play at art- and food-filled Eastham Turnip Festival
EASTHAM — Every November, the turnip becomes a rallying cry for four members of the Higher Ground String Band. They perform a little gospel, a little bluegrass, a little folk — and, as the highlight, a selection of Beatles tunes rewritten with root-vegetable-themed lyrics.
The band had been a staple of the pre-Thanksgiving Eastham Turnip Festival for a decade. Saturday’s concert at the Chapel in the Pines will be the first time since 2019 that Cheryl Parkington (guitar/banjo), Mike Murzyn (bass), Jean Sagara (violin/mandolin), and Randy Patterson (guitar/mandolin) have returned to play some favorite tunes together.
Turnip Festival chair Marianne Sinopoli says of the group, “I like to say they share our turnip DNA.”
The harvest celebration is organized by the staff of the Eastham Public Library, where Sinopoli is outreach librarian. It’s a not-for-profit event that honors the town’s long agricultural history, giving pride of place to Eastham’s renowned turnip. The vegetable is known, Sinopoli says, for its sweet, mild flavor and versatility in cooking, and the festival includes chances to buy the tubers as well as to sample turnip dishes and treats at restaurants in the area.
According to local histories, in 1910 — when a large part of an Eastham childhood was spent hoeing and thinning turnips — the town turned out 10,710 bushels of them. During the Depression, as the turnip market dried up, most farmers had to abandon the bulbous delights — but Eastham native Art Nickerson saved his seeds and returned to growing them in the 1970s, effectively saving the Eastham turnip from extinction. Aficionados can tell when they’re holding a true Eastham turnip. Various area farmers have since taken up the crop, acquiring and saving seeds to expand what’s available.
With renovations ongoing at the usual site of the festival, Nauset Regional High School, this year’s 20th-anniversary “turnipalooza” will host arts, games, crafts, and performances at the Eastham library and the Chapel in the Pines next door on Samoset Road. There will be a “blessing of the turnips” by GBH reporter Bob Seay before the Higher Ground concert.
Their songbook includes covers of Laurie Lewis’s “Dream of a Home,” Any Old Time String Band’s “Cowboy Girl,” and the Mamas & the Papas’ “Dedicated to the One I Love,” plus Patterson’s original “Ramblin’ River Man.” Choices for gospel fans include “Wicked Path of Sin” and “The River of Jordan.”
Then, of course, there are the turnip songs. The festival regularly holds a songwriting contest in which contestants choose a song, usually from the 1960s or ’70s, and rewrite the lyrics with turnips in mind. In 2013, Wellfleet resident Jill Putnam rewrote the Beatles’ “Good Day Sunshine” to “Good Day Turnip.” It’s become a Higher Ground staple.
In 2019, the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, Eastham resident Carol Burton won the contest with “Nip, the Eastham Turnip,” sung to the tune of Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” Parkington says the band has adapted other classics during rehearsals over the years: “The Turnip in the Coconut,” “Wooly Turnip,” and “Tiptoe Through the Turnips.”
“These songs just keep popping out,” Parkington says. “We’ll bring out some of these old songs that give us old folks a tickle.”
When not performing with Higher Ground, Sagara plays with the Black Whydah band, which recently played at Wellfleet Porchfest, and Patterson plays pop music all over the Cape with the Heyday trio, Digney Fignus, and other groups. Parkington and Murzyn regularly play in Vermont, where they have a second home near Mount Holly.
Parkington is happy to be back playing in Eastham at a festival she’s watched grow and that she says has taught her a lot about turnips. And the learning keeps happening. A few weeks ago, at a concert of Scottish musicians, she learned that people in Scotland don’t carve pumpkins. They carve turnips. Turnips inspire creativity, it seems, all over the world.
More Events to Turn Up For
Beyond the afternoon concert by Higher Ground, there are multiple other events planned for this year’s Eastham Turnip Festival.
Several local farmers will sell turnips on Saturday, Nov. 18 at the Orleans Farmers Market (19 Old Colony Way), where mascots Mr. and Ms. Turnip will hand out reusable purple shopping bags. A local farmer will give growing tips at the Eastham library, and the Eastham Historical Society’s agricultural exhibit called “Tracing Our Roots” will be on view at the 1869 Schoolhouse Museum (25 School House Road).
New to the festival this year is an exhibit of antique tools and farming implements at the Swift Daley House (2375 Route 6), where there will also be demonstrations on the forge and experts to identify and appraise antique tools.
During the festival, nearly 30 Lower Cape restaurants will feature turnip dishes on their menus in the form of scones, croissants, quiche, soups, pot pies, and turnip curry — along with turnip-flavored ice cream by the Local Scoop. For a complete listing see easthamturnipfestival.com.
From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, the Eastham Public Library will offer an assortment of family-friendly fun for turnip experts and neophytes alike: Trevor the Juggler, Jungle Jim’s Balloon & Magic Show, face painting, temporary turnip tattoos, reading turnip tales to dogs, crafts, games, henna body art, caricature art, photo ops with Mr. and Ms. Turnip, art demonstrations, and a sale of turnip merchandise.
Turnip the Music
The event: The Higher Ground String Band at the Eastham Turnip Festival
The time: Saturday, Nov. 18, 1 p.m.
The place: Chapel in the Pines, 220 Samoset Road
The cost: Free; see easthamturnipfestival.com
ROOTS
Growing the Eastham Turnip Is a Labor of Love
Heirloom seeds put down roots where the land will allow
EASTHAM — Orleans farmer Judy Scanlon can still recall the moment her interest in the Eastham turnip was sparked.
“I was driving with my mother, just exploring, when we saw a man standing in a field of plants I didn’t recognize,” she said. Eastham farmer David Raphaelson told her the sea of stalks she was looking at were Eastham turnips.
HANDSOME ROOTS
When Turnips Were King in Eastham
How Art Nickerson saved the town’s tasty tuber
EASTHAM — One hundred eleven years ago, the sandy fields of Eastham yielded 10,710 bushels of turnips, more than every other town from Provincetown to Yarmouth combined. When local farmers truck their tubers to the Orleans Farmers Market for Taste of Turnip Day this Saturday, Nov. 20, only one vendor will be selling Eastham-grown Eastham turnips.
“I think we’ll have about 600 turnips,” said Jared Kimler, which comes to about 12 bushels. Kimler is leasing a third of an acre at Redberry Farm, off Schoolhouse Road, with fellow farmer and childhood friend Brian Tingley. Both are 28, which makes them the youngest growers of Eastham turnips this year.
Kimler and Tingley are farmers-in-residence at Halcyon Farm in Brewster, but they decided to plant longer-growing crops like turnips and potatoes in Eastham. Their patch is small and is fenced in to protect it from deer.
Two other farmers will be selling Eastham turnips at Taste of Turnip Day. Brent and Peg Hemeon of Harwich planted about 1.5 acres and have been selling turnips at their farm stand off Bank Street since the beginning of the month. Peter and Dilys Staaterman of Longnook Meadow Farm in Truro started harvesting this week and will also be selling Eastham turnips at their stand.
Otherwise, Eastham turnips may be hard to find. Bob Wells, who owns 5-acre Redberry Farm and usually sells his crop at the annual fest, is not growing turnips this year. There has been no activity at the roadside turnip stand at 5370 State Highway. That property, which is owned by Mary Barnes, is the subject of an unpaid taxes action brought by the town of Eastham in 2017.
The Hemeons and Staatermans reported that heavy autumn rains caused some of their crop to split, and Brent Hemeon had to plant his crop twice this year. Kimler, however, reports that his crop is up to snuff.
“They’re handsome roots,” Kimler said. “In the past 10 days, they’ve been starting to round out. They’re blushing.” After hearing about “turnip mania” for months, the Natick native ate his first Eastham turnip this past weekend, in a mash. He said he now understands the hoopla.
Eastham turnips are going for $4 a pound this season.
For the uninitiated, these are not garden-variety turnips that happen to be grown in Eastham. They are a distinct variety, with purple tops and a sweet flavor. All three of this year’s vendors, and likely every grower of Eastham turnips, can trace their turnips back to Art Nickerson’s field on Aspinet Road. Nickerson saved his seeds long after the rest of the town had moved on from its agricultural origins. In doing so, he saved the Eastham turnip.
Art Nickerson (1915-2008) was born in one Eastham and died in a very different one. When he was a boy, Eastham was still a farm town.
“We were brought up raising turnips,” he said on tape in an interview for a 1982 oral history. He said that every boy in Eastham, “when he was old enough to hold a hoe in his hand, went out and hoed and thinned turnips.” The crops were typically planted after the Fourth of July, once the asparagus crop had been harvested. Just 40 years before his birth, Eastham had 84 farms, one for every eight residents, according to the state census. Art’s brother George said children in Eastham grew up on turnips. “If we got hungry at noontime, we went and raided somebody’s turnip field, peeled a turnip, and ate it raw,” he said in 1988.
During the Great Depression, growing turnips became unsustainable. Farmers who had made a living exporting their crop to Boston found that the market simply disappeared. “The last year my father planted turnips,” said Shirley Williams (née Nickerson) many years later, “they got a bill back for the freight. They didn’t pay anything for his turnips. So that was the end.”
Art Nickerson started growing turnips again in 1975, having somehow saved the seeds. “I hated to see the tradition go away,” he said in 1982. He began selling to local grocers, identifying himself as “The Eastham Turnip Man” when he called the stores. He said that true Eastham turnips had to be grown in the town’s sandy soil, and that aficionados could taste the difference.
Nickerson also took pride in farming the old-fashioned way, with antique planters and a 1949 Ford tractor. He told the Cape Codder in 1993 that “the only thing I do different than in the olden days is that I don’t use a horse. He died.”
When winter came, Nickerson buried his remaining crop and covered it with seaweed to keep the turnips supple and protect them from the frost.
Much to Nickerson’s disappointment, the town did not hold onto the old ways. “When we’re gone, the turnips are gone,” he said on tape. “There is no land to raise them on anymore.”
“I kind of hate to see Cape Cod the way it is now,” interjected Nickerson’s friend Joe King. “We used to go gunning night-times. Ten, 11, 12 o’clock, right down to Sunken Meadow there. Four or five boxes of shells. Ship the ducks in for a dollar apiece to Boston. You can’t do that anymore. See? Didn’t we, Arthur?”
“All I can say,” Nickerson said, “is we knew Cape Cod when Cape Cod was Cape Cod. It’ll never be the same.”
Root Causes
The Eastham Turnip Festival and Eastham Library have created a handy resource for holiday shopping this year. Visit easthamturnipfestival.com for a “Virtual Holiday Marketplace.” You’ll find local foodstuffs, books, crafts, and more. This event is ongoing.
ROOTS
Eastham Turnip Festival Week
Just because we can’t hang out in person to taste treats like the famous (or infamous) turnip whoopie pie doesn’t mean we have to miss a day of celebrating Eastham’s subterranean specialty. Here is a list of ways to get your turnip on during what is traditionally the annual turnip festival.
‘A Taste of Turnip Day’ (Saturday, Nov. 21)
Sample creative turnip recipes at the following participating restaurants: the Alley BBQ in Orleans, Basco Grill in Eastham, the Beacon Room in Orleans, Brickhouse Restaurant in Eastham, Brine in Eastham, C Shore Kitchen + Bar in Wellfleet, Cape Sea Grille in Harwich Port, Cottage Street Bakery in Orleans, Fairway Restaurant & Pizzeria in Eastham, Good Eats on 6 in Eastham, Hog Island Beer Co. in Orleans, the Hole in One Bakery in Eastham and Orleans, Karoo in Eastham, Laura & Tony’s Kitchen in Eastham, Local Break in Eastham, the Local Scoop in Orleans, Mac’s Market and Kitchen in Eastham, Mahoney’s Atlantic Bar & Grill in Orleans, the Red Barn Pizza in Eastham, Sam’s Deli in Eastham, Sunbird in Orleans, Toast to the Coast in Orleans, and Whisk in Orleans.
Or, pick up the uber-sweet tuber at these places:
- Eastham Superette on Route 6
- Friends’ Marketplace in Orleans.
- Hemeon’s Farm at 186 Off Bank Street, Harwich Port
Other Virtual Fest-ivities on the Eastham Turnip Festival Website
“Tracing Our Roots”: Videos of Turnip Fests past, from 2003 to 2019.
“A Taste of Turnip” Cooking Demo: Bob Willis, owner and chef at C Shore Kitchen + Bar, shows us how to make his Turnip and Crab Rangoon, which won a 2019 Turnip Festival award, in a special video.
“Direct from the Turnip Field”: Turnip farmer Bob Wells of Redberry Farm gives a video presentation.
“Homage to Cape Cod Festivals”: Hear from local author Kathryn Kleekamp in an interview about her soon-to-be-released book on Cape Cod festivals, including the Turnip Festival.
For Tiny Turnip-Lovers
Three virtual performances will be broadcast on Lower Cape TV/Channel 22. They will also be available for viewing at the Turnip Festival website Saturday, Nov. 21 through Saturday, Nov. 28:
- Trevor the Juggler
- Mary Wilson and Pitter Patter Puppets
- Jungle Jim’s Balloon/Magic Show
More Turnip Fun for Kids
Also on the website: Molly Driscoll’s first-grade art students have created a bumper crop of turnip heads. See them in a virtual art gallery.
Turnip ‘StoryWalk’
Families can stroll around the Eastham Library grounds while reading The Turnip by Jan Brett, from Saturday, Nov. 21 to Saturday, Nov. 28.
‘Grab & Go Crafternoon Ideas’
Eastham’s Youth Services Librarian Fran McLoughlin has packaged some fun turnip-themed crafts. Grab them curbside from Saturday, Nov. 21 to Saturday, Nov. 28, or as long as supplies last. Look for the purple book truck outside the library building.
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
Turnip Time in Eastham
The lowly crucifer and its legendary local growers
EASTHAM — As the nights chill, the leaves fall, and the holidays approach, our thoughts turn to, yes, the turnip — that ancient crucifer that has, for too long, been relegated to the lowly status of livestock feed and staple for the poor. But don’t tell that to the folks in Eastham who have elevated their local turnip to celebrity status, honoring the deliciously sweet, white-fleshed, open-pollinated heirloom with its own festival.
Eastham has seen its share of change over the last century, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the Eastham turnip. Because its single seed line “breeds true,” producing offspring of the same variety, today’s turnip has inherited all the traits of its parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. If our own ancestors could return for a family supper, their Eastham turnip would taste just the way they remember it.
The origin of Eastham turnips seems to be another Cape Cod mystery. As early as 1875, Eastham, the most agricultural of the Outer Cape towns, was the third largest producer of turnips in Barnstable County. In January 1884, the Barnstable Patriot reported that, during one week, 1,200 bushels — a bushel weighing about 55 pounds — had been shipped by train from Eastham to Boston. In 1895 the Yarmouth Register noted that J.B. Steele and George M. Harding were expecting to have the finest lot of turnips — 3,000 bushels — of any farm in Eastham. By 1905, Eastham ranked first in the county for turnip production.
A 1911 story in the Sandwich Observer mused that the “happy and contented community” of Eastham, with a population of 518, was running smoothly on a total appropriation of only $3,470, thanks in part to its asparagus crop and its famous Eastham white turnips.
How to explain the success and magical flavor of these tandem crops, asparagus — known as “grass” — picked in the spring, and turnips pulled in the fall? Was it the quality of Eastham’s sand, said to be particularly suited for both crops, and, perhaps, some peculiarity of the Cape atmosphere? By the 1920s, hundreds of acres were devoted to the two crops and by the early 1930s, the heyday of turnip production, upward of 50,000 bushels of turnips were marketed annually, a portion of the harvest often buried in pits and covered with seaweed to wait for higher prices in the spring.
If the Eastham turnip can boast a resilient ancestral line, so could one of Eastham’s turnip-growing families, the Bracketts, whose turnips are said to be the progenitors of today’s Eastham root. Through the marriage of William Brackett to Sarah Hopkins, the family was descended from Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins. In 1805, William and Sarah’s son, Samuel, married Mercy Cobb, and in 1808 the first of their 11 children, Elkanah — named for Mercy’s father — was born in Wellfleet. A mariner in his early years, Elkanah eventually came ashore and by 1880 was farming 16 acres of sandy Eastham soil.
Married three times, Elkanah Cobb Brackett rests with his wives, Sally Holbrook, Paulina Cole, and Achsah Snow Crosby, and other family members in Eastham’s Congregational and Soldiers Cemetery, a small burial ground with a rural character located along Route 6, next to Evergreen Cemetery. The cemetery takes its name from its association with the third Congregational meetinghouse, which was built on the site in 1829 and razed after 1864 when the Congregationalists disbanded, and from the Civil War obelisk presented by the Ladies Soldiers Aid Society of Eastham. Though not off the beaten path, the cemetery seems a little forgotten, undisturbed, scattered with prickly pear cactus.
The Brackett cemetery plot tells a sorrowful tale. Sally Holbrook died in 1834 at age 24, leaving three very young children for their father to care for. A year after Sally’s death, Elkanah married Paulina Cole, and in 1836 and 1838 the first two of their six children were born. But in those same years, his daughters, Sarah and Lucy, from his marriage to Sally died, both before their fifth birthdays. Later in 1838, the first-born son of Elkanah and Paulina, also named Elkanah, died at age two, and in 1843 William H. Brackett, the last surviving child of Elkanah and Sally, was lost at sea at age 14. Sally’s three children share her headstone.
After the death of Paulina in 1860, Elkanah married Achsah Snow Crosby, with whom he had three children. Richard, the first born, died in 1862 at six months and is buried with his father, though their toppled headstone, sunken in the sandy soil, is difficult to decipher. Its base remains in place and, perhaps, one day the stone could be restored.
Sons George Pierson (1863-1946) and Samuel Francis (1864-1948) inherited their father’s homestead and would become Eastham’s legendary turnip and asparagus growers, farming 48 acres, a portion of which is now the Seamen’s Bank at Brackett Farm on Route 6. On a knoll adjacent to the bank’s parking area, bronze tablets — installed on a polished stone elegantly etched with turnip and asparagus designs — pay tribute to the family. For decades, until it closed in the mid-1930s, the brothers also owned Brackett’s General Store.
The Depression years took a toll on Eastham’s turnip farms, but the family tradition continued with George’s son, Raymond Vaughn Brackett (1893-1982), and later with Art Nickerson (1915-2008), who, as a boy, had farmed with Raymond Brackett and whose father, George Nickerson, was also a longtime turnip grower. Various career paths took Art Nickerson away from Eastham, but he returned in the early 1950s, was given stewardship of Raymond Brackett’s turnip seeds, and, despite the vagaries of farming and modern life, managed to keep alive what a reporter in 1923 had called the “justly inherited name and fame” of Eastham’s heirloom.
ROOTS
Eastham Turnip Festival Goes Virtual
Celebrating the town’s agricultural history in new ways
EASTHAM — The Outer Cape’s annual fall festivals have all taken a hit during 2020, thanks to Covid-19. “What’s next?” you might be asking. “No Eastham Turnip Festival this year?”
Not if Marianne Sinopoli can help it.
“Our thought was not to cancel outright and put the turnip to bed for the year, but to see what we could do to keep the spirit of the turnip festival alive, albeit virtually,” says Sinopoli, now in her eighth year as Turnip Festival chair. “I’m happy to say that we’ve had some creative ideas. I like to use the line, ‘We’ve taken this rotten tomato, and we’re trying to “turnip” it around.’ ”
The 17th annual festival, originally scheduled for Nov. 21, will take a turn away from its usual gathering spot at the Nauset Regional High School. But it will still celebrate Eastham’s agricultural history.
The purple and white Eastham turnip was always coveted for its unique flavor and sweeter-than-others taste. That’s what brings so many to the festival, held annually on the third weekend in November.
In 2019, over 3,000 pounds of turnips were sold in just three hours. This year, Eastham turnips, supplied by Red Berry Farm, will be available for purchase at the Eastham Superette and Friends Market in Orleans.
The annual turnip cookoff has been a highlight, featuring turnip-based treats such as turnip au gratin, quiche, pulled pork, and even turnip doughnuts.
The cookoff will be sidelined this year in favor of the “Taste of Turnip” Day on Nov. 21. Local food establishments that feature an Eastham turnip dish that day will be highlighted on the festival site, social media, and media outlets. Eighteen eateries have already signed on.
A virtual craft fair, featuring local artisans and farmers, is in the works.
Various online children’s activities are planned, along with a “Story Walk,” featuring the pages of a turnip picture book, to be set up outside at either the library or the Windmill Green. Entertainers include Trevor the Juggler, a balloon and magic show by Jungle Jim, and puppeteer Mary Wilson.
More details and links to events will be listed at easthamturnipfestival.com in another week or two. For more information, call Marianne Sinopoli at 508-240-5950, ext. 3132.
FESTIVALS
To Everything, Turn, Turn, Turnip
EASTHAM — The 16th annual Eastham Turnip Festival was a groovy one. Crowds enjoyed music, crafts, food, and all things turnip. Twelve restaurants vied for the top turnip recipe as determined by judges state Rep. Sarah Peake, Van Rensselaer’s Restaurant owner Peter Hall, and Cape Cod Times Food Editor Gwenn Friss.
Sam’s Deli won first place with the Brackett Slider; the Jailhouse Tavern won second place with Turnip au Gratin; and the Whalewalk Inn took third place with Eastham Quiche. The People’s Choice award went to CShore Kitchen + Bar’s Turnip and Crab Rangoon. Bob Willis, owner and chef there, said that the rangoons will be on the menu along with several other turnip dishes all winter.
In the turnip shuck-off — which is about who can peel a turnip fastest — Kim Radke won first place with a time of 58 seconds; Kirsten Friedrich took second with a time of 1:02; and Amy Brocker placed third with a time of 1:13.
In the songwriting competition, contestants were challenged to choose a song from 1969 and rewrite the lyrics with turnips in mind. Carol Burton’s “Nip, the Eastham Turnip,” set to the tune of “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” took the top prize.
Joe Durant won the enormous turnip contest, guessing its exact weight of 17 pounds, 3 ounces. —Molly Newman