Many years ago a friend asked if I wanted to try some roots from a plant growing wild near his vegetable garden. “People have been eating these roots for hundreds of years,” he said. “You boil them like you would a potato.”

The plant he dug up to collect the roots looked like a sunflower but the friend said it wasn’t. “Related to the sunflower maybe,” he said, “and it’s got a funny name, Jerusalem artichoke.”

An edible wild plant that looked like a sunflower, had a mysterious name, and was harvested for generations by everyone from the Mi’kmaq on? Let me tell you that I was hooked immediately on that wild plant with the odd name. The friend needn’t have added it was connected with early French explorers and a wild Canadian plant was widely cultivated in Europe at one time, but this revelation further increased my fascination with it.

Today I have a slim file of information on the Jerusalem artichoke, which I’ve been compiling since being introduced to it. I learned some interesting things, like the origin of its name and the fact that French explorers took the plant from Canada to France where it became widely used and played a minor role in agricultural history. Once, French peasants rose up in rebellion over taxation of the vegetables they cultivated, claiming the popular Jerusalem artichoke should be exempt on grounds that it matured with little or no care.

One of the first things I discovered was that the plant is a cousin of the sunflower and not related to the artichoke. Nor does it come from Jerusalem. In the History and Social Influence of the Potato (1949) Redcliffe Salaman lumps the Jerusalem artichoke with various root crops that once were common in 17th and 18th century marketplaces of Europe.

The plant is native to Canada. The French explorers Champlain and Lescarbot found Indians cultivating it as a food and decided to take it home. The Jerusalem artichoke reached France circa 1607 and within a decade was being grown in England. Salaman says it was received “in court circles in France with much enthusiasm” and was soon common in the marketplace. Unfortunately it was competing with another relatively new tuber, the potato, which was found to be more acceptable in the kitchen, easier to cultivate and more edible.

There’s a bit of mystery on how and when the plant, which grows wild here, reached Nova Scotia. In his book Acadia: The Geography of Nova Scotia to 1760, Andrew Hill Clarke in a footnote regarding the Mi’kmaq use of the wild potato and wild carrots observes: “Neither of the Helianthes (sunflower or Jerusalem artichoke), which are commonly seen in the Nova Scotia countryside today, seem to have been present in the 17th century.”

While it was eventually spurned by the French peasantry and their British counterparts in favour of the potato, use of the Jerusalem artichoke eventually spread throughout Europe and beyond. There are two theories on how its name arose. One is that it’s a corruption of the Italian Girasola articiocco, meaning the sunflower artichoke, another that a Dutchman named Ter-Heusen was a major distributor of the tuber throughout Europe in the 17th century and his name, modified to Jerusalem, was applied to the plant. Because the French brought them first from Canada the tuber was once known at “potatoes of Canada” and the “Canadian potato.”

They’re scarce but you can find the Jerusalem artichoke growing wild here today; if you happen to harvest the roots, you’ll find they have a peculiar flavour and are a bit sooty but complement beef and wild fowl. Locally, at least one wild food enthusiast cultivates them for the table.

“At the time, Mrs. Anna Porter (who lived in a house near the Cape) was out gathering an armful of wood. Suddenly a great whirring sound was heard. Glancing up the road from whence the sound seemed to come, she saw it coming…. She did not stop to gaze in wonder. Dropping her wood much quicker than she had picked it up, she ran into the house screaming hysterically, “Here comes the red devil.”

The “red devil” was an automobile and the time about a century ago. The automobile was just appearing in many Kings County communities and the reaction of Mrs. Anna Porter may have been typical of people hearing and seeing one for the first time.

Similar stories are told in various communities. However, in 1932 when the pupils of Whitewaters School wrote a history of Blomidon, the tale of Mrs. Porter’s reaction to an automobile was probably part of village folklore. It may not have happened just that way. But as you’ll see from other references to the automobile in this quaint history, its arrival was alarming to one and all.

“The first automobile made its appearance in Blomidon in 1910,” the students wrote. “Imagine the consternation of the people one quiet summer day when they suddenly heard a queer noise and saw the red body of a horseless vehicle flash by. Some had heard of the automobile before, but few had ever seen one.

“(The car) was a one-seater affair driven by Mr. Munroe of Wolfville, and by his side sat his lady friend, a Miss Farrum, bookkeeper for the Sir Fred. Borden Supply Co., Canning. Apparently they were enjoying the great sensation they were causing.”

The history, which I have before me courtesy of Philip Beeler, list various other “firsts” in the Blomidon, Whitewaters area of Kings County. “It was seven years after this exciting episode (the red devil’s run through the community) before an automobile was really owned by anyone in Blomidon, Mr. F. C. Bigelow being the first to own one here.”

The students of Whitewaters School felt the arrival of the phonograph in the community was worthy of noting as well. “The first phonograph was owned by Miss Ellen Woollaver. Many a pleasant evening was spent by the neighbors, while listening to the sweet music or chatting pleasantly of its wonders.”

The schoolboy/schoolgirl historians gave no date for the phonograph’s arrival in the community. On the telephone, however, there’s an entry reading “Hustons had one in 1901,” which apparently was added after the history was compiled. This telephone, say the young historians, was “very different in appearance and effectiveness to the one found in almost every home in Blomidon now. It was a simple box style and the batteries were on the outside (not at all ornamental). This first found its way into the home of Mr. James Woollaver, Blomidon.”

Arrival of the radio is also noted. “The first radio was owned by Mrs. B. L. Jackson, who brought it to Blomidon in 1924.”

We learn from this little history that lumbering and shipbuilding once were main industries of the area. “Lumbering at one time seemed to be an important industry. Several old mills are still found around, two having been abandoned at the top of the Cape, and another at the foot. There is only one mill running now. This is owned by the Bigelow brothers and is located at the top of the mountain. At one time, when lumbering was more important, a sluice was built from the top to the foot of the Cape, and on which the logs were easily carried down.

“Shipbuilding has been carried on to a certain extent in times long past. Mr. Von Loomer was about the first shipbuilder in Blomidon. Later others followed his example and quite a number of vessels were built.”

As it still is today, the main industry over the years was farming. “Several fruit companies have from time to time been established in Blomidon. One went by the name of Whitewaters Fruit Company, still another was the Seaside Fruit company. Later was founded the Mill Creek Fruit Company, established abut 1918, under the auspices of Mr. Wallace DeWitt, Mr. Edward Pineo, Mr. Enos Lyons and others.”

“Farming was done with comparatively primitive tools,” Nellie McMahon observed about life on the farm some 100 years ago. “There were no mowing machines, reapers (or) horse rakes. Most of the work was very laborious.”

These quotes are taken from an essay, most likely a school project, that Nellie McMahon wrote in a crisp, wonderfully legible hand in 1899. McMahon’s essay – a history of Aylesford and district – was recently donated to the Kings County Museum by her niece. Thanks to the Museum’s curator, Bria Stokesbury, I’ve been given the opportunity to read the essay, a homey, fascinating glimpse of what it was like to live in the Annapolis Valley late in the 19th century.

Look at social activities, for example, in those “before days,” – before radio, before the automobile, before television:

“Although the houses were widely scattered, there was considerable intercourse between the people. They combined work with pleasure and had reaping frolics, chopping frolics, etc., for the men; and hooking bees, sewing bees, etc. for women.”

The writer tells us here is that when there was winter wood to bring in, and crops to harvest, men would move from neighbour to neighbour and collectively cut and harvest; meanwhile, women would meet socially, holding “bees,” or gatherings for communal work such as quilting and sewing.

Husking bees, McMahon tells us, were participated in by “young and old of both sexes. This community gathering, apparently to husk corn for immediate consumption or winter storage, was usually held in a barn, McMahon says, and “the evening ended with a good dance.”

There is a puzzling reference in her description of the frolics and bees. Immediately after mentioning the dance that followed the husking, McMahon writes that “the apple parings were also very enjoyable to all.”

Besides church activities, the frolics and bees may have been the extent of the entertainment in McMahon’s day and for the men perhaps, the only relief from tedious, never ending farm work. Life wasn’t easy for farm women then either, as McMahon reveals. “In those times the housewife’s tasks were far from easy. At night there was all the milk to pour out in the pans, to be skimmed in the morning. Every family made its own cheese and butter. The mothers and daughters, instead of doing fancywork, reading novels or playing the piano, filled in the spare time by working at the heavy loom spinning or knitting. All of the clothing was of home manufacture.”

In her essay McMahon offers glimpses of two Valley personalities, one notorious, the other legendary. The latter is the famed Valley strongman, John Orpin, of whose feats of strength much has been written. Orpin must have been a neighbour of McMahon’s parents since she wrote that “I myself had the pleasure, when a child, of being entertained in this man’s house. McMahon mentions a feat of physical endurance by Orpin that I haven’t read in contemporary accounts of his life.

That notorious character is one Peter Barnes, who along the Bay of Fundy in 1793 lured a ship into treacherous shore rocks during a storm. The crew, five in all, died of exposure when the vessel was wrecked on the shore. Barnes looted the vessel. His murderous act only came to light after his death when his widow revealed what he had done.