10/26/2026
A Rave review from a first time visitor
Yesterday we found our way to Wardsboro Vermont, population ~850, to get a look (and taste!) of this legendary tuber, and learn how it came to be so. Thus was our introduction to the Gilfeather Turnip Festival.
How many vegetables do you know that have their own website? We tasted turnip latkes, turnip soup, turnip salad, scalloped turnips, turnip donut holes and, yes, turnip FUDGE. Perhaps the terroir of Wardsboro is what gave them the great flavor, but they were quite tasty.
However, the best part is this: after driving along very rural roads and sparsely populated towns, you turn onto Main Street in Wardsboro where this tiny town has doubled down hard to support their library.
From well-marked instructions of where to park--officiated by Scouting America Troop #428, donation $5, to serious turnip merch made by local craftspeople, to the sale of turnips by the pound, to a fundraising lunch that ran like a well-oiled machine, to dozens of vendors, to the...sigh...Wardsboro Library Book Sale it became clear that this little town knows how to celebrate it's roots. Or tubers, as you like.
The annual approach to Thanksgiving tends to bring out the snark in our extended family. One engineer threatened to create a trebuchet--think catapult--to launch my turnips into the woods. That same family unknowingly went home with a turnip underneath the driver's seat of their car.
You might want to go next year.
Marcy Bartlett
Wilder
