For The Love Of The Turnip Man

"He would spend seven days a week, all day out there. He wanted to keep the Eastham turnip alive for Eastham."

Lynn Dalton, Daughter of Art NIckerson, The Turnip Man.

Who was the Turnip Man?

20 January 2024 – EASTHAM, MA – Art Nickerson, a.k.a the Turnip Man, grew old with the iconic Eastham turnips. The purple heirloom put Eastham on the map as the number one vegetable exporter in Cape Cod, until war and tourism changed it all.

In the photos, Arthur Nickerson is resting his 90-year old arms on a long-shafted garden tool. His white cowboyhat matches his trousers, belt and shoes, all in same color as the sandy soil covering his turnip field behind the house he built in North Eastham. Why the iconic Eastham turnip is so different from its kin growing in other parts of America, no one knows, but local lore draws an imaginary line in the sand between Arnold's Lobster and Clam Bar and the Wellfleet border.

Legend says this is where  turnips grew the sweetest and mildest, and, though the photo of Art and his field is black and white, a deep purple color and a glass-like surface. In this short documentary, the Turnip Man's daughters talke us on a tour of a slice of the Cape's history.

What did turnips mean for Eastham?

There was a time when farmland was all the eye could see when driving through Eastham. The railway between the Cape's towns and Boston helped make Eastham the biggest exporter of vegetables - number one on the Cape in exporting vegetables.

Marca Daley, Archivist at Eastham Historical Society, has researched Eastham's agricultural past and listened to almost 100 interviews with old farmers recorded during the 1980s and 1990s. She says they all talked about the growing of turnips. Turnips, along with asparagus, reigned as the most important crop in Eastham in the time between the industrial period and World War II. The two crops wove together over the course of the growing season.

Why was Art Nickerson called The Turnip Man?

As times changed in the 1950s  with the rise of highways and housing development, only a few turnip fields survived. Within a short time, Art Nickerson would be the only one in all of Eastham still growing turnips at scale. He spent his core professional life managing his own garage, but  never let go of purple root. After retirement, Art returned to the plant's pitting, seeding and pulling well  into his nineties. His tireless work would earn him an epithet suited to a Marvel character: The Turnip Man.

What happened to the turnips?

Flash forward to the present. The black-and-white photo of "The Turnip Man"  in his cowboy hat changes hands around the table in Lynn Dalton's kitchen. She is Art's youngest daughter and she sits surrounded by her four older sisters - Jody Quill, Audrey Bohannon, Janice Nickerson and Joyce Angelleli - and a pile of photos of three generations on Art's turnip field on Aspinet Road. The field lies at the point where Aspinet forks into Massasoit Road and where Art grew up tending his father's turnip field.

What happened to the original seeds?

Art passed away in 2008 at the ripe old ages of 93, but his five daughters kept Art's turnips alive. Lynn's kitchen table holds a small bowl with turnip seed pods and turnip seeds. The sisters talk about the slow and painstaking work of preserving the seeds – which are direct descendants from the original Eastham turnips.

They talk about their dad and his love for turnips, remembering how Art would spend seven days a week, all day out there. Lyn and Audrey nod in agreement: he loved it.

Scroll up and click on photo to watch "For Love of the Turnip Man." Or, click HERE to open it in a new browser window.

For more information:

• The Turnip Festival Celebrates 20 years
• Photos of Art Nick and his family in the Massachusetts Collections Online