My father-in-law (a/k/a the Happy Gardner) came over the other evening to pull the turnips. Turnips as in what seems to be an acre of turnips. Turnips as in you have never seen a garden have so many turnips–not rows mind you, but an entire solid patch of turnips! You see, the Turners like their turnips. Myself . . . never tried one, don’t care to. I grew up on a farm and my mom always had a huge garden–corn, green beans, peas, tomatoes galore–but never once did a turnip grow there. Which has left me scratching my head as to what I may have missed out on. Back to the story. . . This my little blogger friends–is the most hugest, gigantic, elephantitist sized turnip I have ever seen!
The picture just can’t show how huge this thing is. Gene’s hands are the size of a bear’s paw to give you some idea of this mammoth. I’m thinking you could throw the turnip behind the wheel of a semi to keep it from rolling down a hill. Need your pool emptied? Just hurl this baby into the middle of it and every drop will be thrown over the side. Hope you are getting my drift. After Gene had pulled all the turnips I was told the tops needed to be cut off (this is a learning experience folks!) I quickly grabbed 2 pairs of what used to be my good scissors (Cooper has used to sharpen sticks, cut the dog’s hair, cut wire, etc.) and helped. It was a very short time until we came up with this. . .
Cooper was more than happy to hook his 4-wheeler up to the sled and pull the huge load to Gene’s car. There are 10 times this many more still in the garden. While picking the turnips Gene discovered that he had even planted Japanese turnips–cripes, were the others not enough? I mean let’s be realistic–how many can one eat during the course of the winter? Do the Japanese ones taste different? Again, don’t care to go there because then I would have to taste one. . . NOT!
What do you do with turnips? Boil, fry, or bake? Does Gene can or freeze them? Donate to a food pantry? Lordy, that’s alot of turnips!