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| Foreword: Father Cutting Turnips |
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Page 1 of 2 Foreword for the October/November 2007 issue of Cornish World magazine (issue 54). ' Many of you may not have ever cut a turnip; I mean properly cut a turnip from the field not cut one into pieces after buying it prepackaged from a supermarket. We used to grow turnips on the farm and very popular they were too. Not many farms could grow turnips like ours, not many farmers could grow turnips like my father. We used dung at St Elvan to fertilize most the fields, it was a more natural way and the turnips grew strong.  Father in the field, cutting a turnip. Father started growing turnips in a big way, 10 acres or more a year, in 1963; his father grew them before that. The years of experience paid off and St Elvan turnips were well regarded and sought after. We, I helped to grow and cut turnips as well, supplied all of Helston and Porthleven with turnips (not swedes, swedes are from England and Sweden, of course). If you’ve eaten a pasty over the past 40 years (and who hasn’t?) then you would have tasted father’s turnips. His turnips have a cult following and were an essential ingredient for many a Sunday roast. So keen is that following that father, although retired, still plants a few acres and sells them from a tray outside his house in Porthleven. People drive from miles to get a red and white turnip and sit in their car waiting for father to come back from field with a couple dozen on a Sunday morning. Once, some years ago, we had some turnip rustlers up at the farm. Father was checking the fields one night and found 20-odd sacks of turnips bagged up inside a field gate. Someone had been cutting our turnips by night! We waited and we caught them. |
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