When the news broke in 2009 that the First Lady was putting in an organic garden at the White House, all my gardening friends sent her Gilfeather Turnip seeds. Picturing a forest of turnip plants on the White House lawn, we all rushed out to buy packets.
Two problems: security concerns kept the Obamas from accepting such gifts, and Washington isn’t cold enough to bring the vegetable to its proper sweetness. Harvested after the first real frost, this is a tuber that craves nasty weather.
So it was fitting that one of Montpelier’s legislative accomplishments this year was to designate the Gilfeather Turnip as the Official State Vegetable of Vermont. The act becomes effective July 1, 2016.
Developed in the early 1900’s by Wardsboro farmer John GIlfeather, the turnip has been enjoyed locally and even celebrated for decades. But it was the students in Grades 4-through-6 at the Wardsboro Elementary School who saw the legislation through. Over two years, they attended hearings at the State House, testifying and giving illustrated presentations about the virtues of the Gilfeather.
Samantha Bovat, Wardsboro’s Grade 5/6 teacher is justifiably proud of how hard the kids worked, to say nothing of their perseverance through the 2-year process. The students made four trips to Montpelier in which they witnessed the voting process in the Agriculture House Committee and the straw poll taken by the Senate Agriculture Committee. They were aided by Friends of the Wardsboro Library and our state representative, Laura Sibilia.
Thankfully, they were spared the sort of contentious debate that dominates Washington these days, even though the Gilfeather is not without some controversy. The turnip might just be a vegetable that mutates early and often: the town of Waldoboro, Maine has a turnip called the Greenneck that looks a lot like the Gilfeather. And there’s the Eastham Turnip, another large and delicious turnip said to have washed ashore from shipwrecks off Cape Cod.
It’s unclear whether John Gilfeather was a brilliant hybridizer or just lucky in the creation of the Gilfeather. But Gilfeather was a cagey Vermonter, and secretive about the process of developing the tuber. He also managed to corner the market on the seeds.
Fast forward to the early 1980s when Mary Lou and Bill Schmidt of Dummerston trademarked the name and certified it as an heirloom botanical with both the Vermont and U.S. Departments of Agriculture.
We southern Vermonters remain diehard Gilfeather fans. So when the First lady leaves the White House for more northern adventures, we may just try again to send her some seeds.
