So why are they so rare, in my experience? For one thing, you need to plant parsnips in March around here. Well, conditions might be appropriate for planting a small seed in the ground in March on about two individual days, and you never really know when those days might happen. The soil has to be just warm and dry enough and it has to be ruffled enough to welcome and host a very slow-growing seed.
Let's say you do find a day that works. This year that day was March 29 here on our farm. Of course, we couldn't get the G started on that one magical day (the G is the little 1950s tractor that we use to mark the rows so we can later cultivate using the same tractor...cultivating is taking weeds out mechanically by driving down the rows with little shovels that tear out the weeds between the rows). This has happened before, of course, and Carrie and I are not too proud since we are not the mechanics in the group -- so we hooked up a tractor with a chain and towed the G down the bed, marking the rows. We looked so ridiculous that people took pictures as we drove past them in the field.
Once the rows were marked, Carrie used a walk-behind push seeder to plant the parsnips. Then we had to cover them by hand because the soil wasn't quite as good as it had appeared at first. It didn't really flow. Too wet. Luckily parsnips like wet soil and apparently they want to be wet for their entire growing time.
On April 29, the first tiny plants appeared. Most seedlings of other plants pop up between 3 and 10 days after planting. 30 days is a really long wait. You begin to wonder if the seeds were actually viable. Of course, weed seeds are always viable so there were plenty of weeds covering the bed. It was too early to try to cultivate because the parsnips were way too tiny to see, so first I hoed the edges of the bed just to give Carrie a prayer when she got going with the cultivator.
A week later, the parsnips are still germinating. We have hoed the whole bed once by hand. But it takes about SIX MONTHS for parsnips to get to full size. And right now their leaves look almost identical to a kind of ground cover that only grows in that field (I suspect my Grandma Newcomb planted that ground cover in her yard 75 years ago because that is one of the few places I have ever seen that type of plant.) so that makes weeding a job for only the most experienced weeders.
And this is precisely why I had never eaten a parsnip before. It is almost impossible to think of a price for parsnips that people would be willing to pay and that would even begin to cover the costs. I only know of one farm that has ever sold parsnips at the market -- and that farm is managed by two former managers of our own farm. So I ask them when I want parsnip guidance. It's a very long, slow learning process. You only get to try the experiment once a year, basically.
I used to think carrots were the high bar but now I know there is a much higher bar. Parsnips make carrots look really easy.
Lilah served carrots and parsnips, grated together and sauteed in butter. It was divine, and now I know it was also incredibly special. Where did she get those parsnips?
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