FARM 2025: Hubbard family keeping Blyth's rutabaga legacy alive

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

These days, more and more folks are looking to keep it local while grocery shopping, and for the people of Blyth, it’s harder to go any more local than the produce from G.L. Hubbard Ltd, located right on Dinsley Street. At Hubbard’s, they grow, store, clean, wax and ship rutabagas - one of the most underrated roots of the modern age. Rutabagas have it all - a versatile vegetable that’s low in calories, high in fibre, rich in nutrients and chock full of antioxidants. 

 

Blyth is lucky to be the county seat when it comes to the cultivation of this cruciferous crop, so The Citizen struck out down the street to see what it could see, and was greeted by Susan Hubbard, who is very accommodating towards those who stop by unannounced and ask for a guided tour of the family facility. 

 

Susan turned out to be a great choice of tour guide - Hubbard’s is a place she knows, inside and out. “I’ve been here since I was 18, so 42 years this year,” she explained. “Everything is still the same - we harvest pretty much the same, just [with] better equipment, and an upgraded system, but everything is pretty much done the same way as when I started…. A few things have changed, like our wax used to be in little small boxes - now they come on skids, of course. Besides that, the line is pretty much still the same, and waxing is still the same.”

 

The Hubbard family’s patriarch, George, bought the plant in 1962, from Russ Dougherty - a local farmer and inventor with a reputation for being something of a rutabaga rebel. In 1951, Dougherty built the first precision seeder in North America, which was a real game-changer in the realm of root vegetables. He was also the one who ensured that the rutabaga became a permanent part of Blyth’s cultural identity with promotional celebrations like Rutabaga Day.

 

George brought his own ingenuity and innovation to the art of rutabaga farming, this time on the harvesting side of production. “Way back then, we had just a one-row puller… our dad actually went up to Smyth Welding and created the harvester. As soon as it was done, they, in turn, went and put it into the Lucknow Fair that year, which was pretty cool.” That old one-row puller still has its uses. “We do still use it for our roadways - to open up the field, so we can get that big harvester in there.”

 

The first step to growing rutabagas is knowing how to correctly identify a rutabaga. This effortlessly inelegant behemoth of the brassica family has accumulated many different monikers over the last few centuries. At various points throughout history, the rutabaga has been known as baggy root, tumshie, ramroot, erfinen, cabbage root, napin, napper, moot, baigie, gwen, neep, yellow turnip, Swedish turnip, Swede, and, of course, just plain turnip. In the United States, they’re often referred to as Canadian turnips.

 

Being in the rutabaga supply business means that Susan sometimes has to play both sides.

 

“When I say rutabaga, everyone’s like, ‘what the heck is that’? So I say turnip. But I know what a turnip is, and a turnip and a rutabaga are different… and it’s actually a rutabaga,” she said. 

 

“A turnip, in my opinion, tastes kind of like a woody radish… a rutabaga is much bigger, purple on top, green in color at the bottom, and it’s sweeter. But everybody just calls it turnip! And I get it - turnip is easier to say than rutabaga any day.”

 

There are a lot of different ideas about the initial emergence of this enigmatic edible root. Common wisdom has long been that the rutabaga is the offspring of a cabbage and a turnip that was popping up wild in farmers’ fields long before it was intentionally cultivated by Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin in the 17th century. A recent study from the University of Missouri points to the likelihood that the rutabaga is the root morphotype of Russian kale. 

 

Though the ancient origin story of the Swede is shrouded in mystery, the variety grown at Hubbard’s, the Laurentian rutabaga, is a well-documented Canadian creation, developed at McGill University in 1912. The Laurentian was favoured for its creamy yellow flesh and sweet flavour, quickly gaining popularity across North America.

 

Once you’ve got all that sorted out, it’s time to start growing your gwens! “April is when we start planting,” Susan explained. “We plant 10 or 12 acres. Then, two or three weeks later, we’ll plant another 10 or 12 acres. We'll do this a couple times, three times, maybe, depending on what the season looks like… the rest are all planted in June. We house approximately 100,000 bushel here between our two storages. If we have a lot left, then we don’t plant nearly as many early crop - we plant them so that we can take them off as we need them.” Those storages are temperature-controlled, to keep the rutabagas looking and tasting their best. The root room at Hubbard’s is full of swedes, as far as the eye can see. 

 

Philip Hubbard has been around rutabagas since before he can remember. “My thoughts on them? It’s a way of life, I guess… it's all I’ve done.” From his perspective, sticking to one root for his entire career has been anything but monotonous. “There’s variety,” he told The Citizen. “It’s never the same thing over and over - every year is different… you plant them, and you don’t know what you’re going to get out of them. You’re hoping you get good stuff, and when you do, you do. And you’ve just got to work with the rest.”

 

It takes about 90 days for a rutabaga to reach maturity, and then it’s time to harvest those tumshies! “We usually start in August, taking off the roots as we need them.” Whether roasted or mashed, the rutabaga has long been a favourite side dish at festive feasts all over North America, which means Hubbard’s needs to get ready for the rush, each and every year. “We take them all up, as soon as our Thanksgiving rush is over… so we do our harvest, and fill the storages up from floor to ceiling - we’re usually done around Halloween. We clean up from that, and then we’re into American Thanksgiving. And then as soon as that’s over, we get a little bit of a lull, and then we’re into Christmas!”

 

Supporting the community in simple ways is also a big part of the Hubbard way of doing business. They donate a portion of their vitamin-laden harvest to various North Huron groups each year, like the Legion, the Ladies Auxiliary and all the local churches. “We donate for their suppers, because we know how hard it is for everybody. When we do have big ones, those are the ones we usually donate. This year, we don’t have a lot of big ones - but we still make it work, and we still donate.”

 

Susan also recalls the times when she would take home all the irregular rutabagas at the end of the day - the ones that were oversized, or damaged just enough to make them unfit for sale, but perfectly edible. “I would take them home, and I would cut them up and cook them, and I’d mash them, and freeze them for the older people so they wouldn’t have to,” she explained. “I’d put it in containers, and they would just heat it up and add whatever they wanted to. So I did that for the older generation at one point, just friends of ours and whatnot.”  

 

Getting their rutabagas ready to ship is a bit more complicated than just plucking them from the earth and tossing them into the back of the proverbial turnip truck. Quality control is critical to the longevity of each rutabaga. “For the last 25 years, all I’ve wanted to do is make a short film on the whole process,” Susan confessed. “Nobody knows how it works - what the process is. Every rutabaga is still trimmed by hand, so every rutabaga is touched at least once by somebody…if you want 500 bushels, it’s not going to just happen.” 

 

Once the neeps have been harvested and stored, they wait until it’s time for them to be processed. Every single one is washed, and then washed again. “You have to make sure they’re dry before you wax them,” she explained. “Then it’s a wee bit of a dip in wax.” Once the wax is dry, the roots are stickered, at which point they are either shipped out or packed up and stored until needed.

 

Hubbard’s ships rutabagas all over North America, and all their dispatching is handled by Stovel-Siemon Ltd, just outside of Mitchell. “They’re the ones that get all our orders,” Susan said. “They do all the legwork, and they are so wonderful to do that, because that’s a lot of work! They get us all our trucks, and we’ve been with them since before I was born. Things have changed hands down there as well, going from generation to generation…. They call and say ‘hey, listen - we need this many skids, it goes on this truck, and this is when it’ll be in. You have it, and then we put it on the truck.”

 

Normally, transporting rutabagas is fairly simple - they have one of the longest shelf-lives of any perishable food out there, and, unlike other storage crops, the flavour of a rutabaga tends to remain unchanged after a few months on the shelf. However, the tumult caused by tariffs may put a damper on the rutabaga export business, at least temporarily. 

 

Domestic consumption of the rutabaga has slumped in recent years, but it’s looking like this slept-on specialty item is poised to make a major comeback with Canadian consumers - especially the younger generations. As the cost of living spirals out of control and the words “Buy Canadian!” are on everybody’s lips, there’s never been a better time to reconnect with this homegrown superfood. It’s cheap, healthy and locally-grown - all things on which people are beginning to place more value. 
“It’s kind of a unique vegetable,” Susan pointed out. “The thing is, not everybody likes rutabaga, right?” While it’s true that some rutabagas are more naturally bitter-tasting than others, the flavour one gets out of a rutabaga is often equal to the ability of the person preparing it. You don’t need to be a master chef to handle it, but rutabaga can get a bad rap if handled incorrectly. Frying it on high heat can exacerbate bitterness, while roasting rutabaga or slowly simmering it in a fragrant sauce brings out all its best qualities. 

 

Even though they’ve spent their whole lives elbow-deep in neeps, everybody at Hubbard’s has yet to tire of this wonderful vegetable. “There’s so many things you can do with the rutabaga, so many,” Susan declared. “We eat it raw! I make a mean rutabaga coleslaw. And then we just cook it normally, like you would cook potatoes - mash it and put a little bit of salt, pepper, and butter with it.” Philip’s favourite way to enjoy the Swede? Nice and simple, on the barbeque.

 

So there you have it, readers: a turnip’s-eye view of G.L. Hubbard Ltd, Blyth’s historic rutabaga farm and processing facility. And the next time you’re at the grocery store or the farmers’ market, pause a moment in the produce aisle, and consider adding the noble rutabaga to your shopping cart. Whether pickled, mashed, minced, smoked or steamed, chances are you won’t regret the decision.