The sunchokes are all out of the ground. We had stored a manure pile on the end of the field for a year so we were excited to dig there and see if the tubers were huge. They were big and plentiful which made for some pretty fun digging. Which is good because I'm sick and it was hard to stay motivated in the field. If you don't know anything about sunchokes...here's a pic:

                      

They are one of the few tubers native to North America. They are related to the sunflower and have flowers that look very similar. They grow to be very tall and then die down in the fall. Dulli mows them down with the tractor and we fork up the ground and grub with our hands to collect them in buckets. Then we wash them, which is what I'm doing in the picture, bag them up, and ship them out through the Finger Lake Organic Growers.

They're like a weed, now that we have two fields full of them we can't really get rid of them. It's all we can do to keep them from spreading, really. But we don't have to water them or weed them or really spend any time on them at all through the height of the season and it gives us a cash crop late in the fall when everything else is done.

And they're definitely earthy, as all tubers are, but they're a little sweet and juicy and crunchy. They are starchy but their starch is inulin which breaks down into fructose, not glucose, in the body. So, they're good for diabetics. And all people. You can roast them or cook them and puree them into a thick potato-like soup, or you can eat them raw. We grate them up into our winter carrot beet salad.

Thus endeth the lesson.

love love
-N