the recent thaw and subsequent cold weather made harvesting tubers somewhat difficult today....the ground was frozen to almost a foot deep and since i didn't bury the tubers any deeper than that they were encased in frozen ground...so i had to dig down to loose soil and then dig back to create a hollow under the frozen ground and bludgeon it until it collapsed freeing the tubers...a time consuming task...you can see in the second photo a tuber stuck in the ground that i had uncovered and was about to liberate...for over an hours worth of work it was not an impressive haul of sunchokes...todays adventure confirmed what we already knew...dig when the weather is with you...i managed to retrieve some and cook them ( i will publish some photos of that in a mimute...as soon as i get them uploaded) but it isn't something i would want to do every day unless hunger was the motivation...i used steel implements to achieve what i did...i imagine anyone from a pre-industrial culture could deveolp technology for winter recovery ( perhaps a fire over the storage pit? or a mulch to make the soil a bit more tractable...which, if i had been thinking, wouldn't have been a bad idea for my trenches...a bit late now, but i still have a bunch of jerusalem artichokes planted on campus and here at home so there will be time to hone my storage skills) but only if it were a staple part of their diet...i may try again in a few weeks depending on what the weather does...or i may wait until the next thaw to try another recepie.
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