Preparing for a spring garden, local man surprised with his shoveling
Sam Williams of Chester stopped by the Village News office last week with a very large turnip. “I thought people might get a kick [out of]seeing this,” he said about the overly sized root crop. “I’ve grown them big before, but not this big.”
Williams said he plants around an acre of crops each season at his home on Harrowgate Road. He buys his seed at Heretick Feed and Seed, and he will usually harvest the turnips in three months.
“It normally freezes during the winter, and we have had little rain; that’s probably why this one survived,” he said.
Turnips are usually harvested around two and a half pounds. Williams’s turnip weighed around eight and a half pounds, and it was 26 inches around.
Williams said people eat turnips any way you would eat a potato; baked, boiled in stews, soups, and stir-fries, or lightly steamed with some butter.
Turnips are low in calorie density but high in nutritional value; they are loaded with fiber and vitamins K, A, C, E, B1, B3, B5, B6, B2, and folate (another of the B vitamins); as well as minerals like manganese, potassium, magnesium, iron, calcium and copper.
“They’re pretty sweet,” Williams said of eating turnips. “I’m going to eat this one.”
