Rutabaga

Brassica napus

Known for having a rich, creamy, yellow flesh and dark purple shoulders, rutabagas are one of the many storage roots that keep us fed all winter long. With a rich flavor similar to Yukon gold potatoes, rutabagas are amazing roasted, made into fries, pureed into soups, or simply sautéed in butter and garlic and enjoyed as is.

Rutabagas from Gathering Together Farm

Rutabga Recipes

Rutabagas and Gilfeather Turnips can be used interchangeably.

Digging Deeper

Harvesting and washing roots is an extremely labor intensive task in the Pacific Northwest. Although many of these crops can be left in the ground to overwinter, with the rain we have in Willamette Valley winters fields are way too muddy to be able to access with tractors without both compacting your soil and getting your tractors stuck in it. So, there’s this big push in early fall before the rainy season hits to dig up all the roots on farm, cut their roots and tops nicely, and store them in bins.

The roots are stored in their mud in dark bins in cooler storage over the winter and think that they are overwintering in the ground as usual, the mud acting as a preservative. Then farms just wash the roots they need week by week all winter long, which is again an arduous process of spraying, cutting, sorting, packing, and lifting. On more conventional operations much of this is mechanized, but on most small organic farms all of it is done by hand in very cold, wet conditions.

As always, with the nourishment that comes with the connections through food there also comes great responsibility to keep the cycle of care going and take action that promotes the health and wellbeing of the hands who harvest.

Supporting farmworker-led efforts and centering immigration reform in our food activism isn’t about one group of people helping out another, it is about recognizing that we are in an inextricable crisis of the exploitation of bodies—whether those bodies are earthly, bodies of water, or human bodies, the problems are all the same. As Vandana Shiva has said,

“No labor movement will really be strong and sustainable until it includes the environmental concern, and no environmental movement will have a relevance for the future unless it brings into the equation—how do people live? How do they survive?”

Here in Oregon, follow PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste), the state’s farmworker union to learn about important upcoming campaigns, partnering organizations, and how to get involved.