The following is a transcript of a story that aired Dec. 18, 2024 on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
(Sound of walking into a washing and sorting facility on Huntsinger Farms in Eau Claire)
Farm manager Kyle Bechel: It’s fairly loud here today. We are washing horseradish.
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Producer Mackenzie Krumme: Are we gonna wash some horseradish?
KB: If you want to.
MK: Heck yeah.
MK: I’m at the Huntsinger farm on Eau Claire’s south side. We are in a warehouse where the smell of their signature vegetable — horseradish — is pungent. I’m with …
KB: Kyle Bechel, I’m the farm manager here at Huntsinger Farms.
MK: This century-old family business tags itself as the largest grower and processor of horseradish in the world. They farm nearly 1,000 acres of horseradish annually and root crop is in the ground anywhere from 12 to 24 months. If you’ve never seen raw horseradish… well, it’s difficult to describe.
KB: I would best describe it as almost like an octopus-looking type of root. So there’s a main root and then there’s their secondary roots that kind of branch off of that main root anywhere from six to 24 inches long. And then anywhere from a pound to — we’ve had some roots upwards of 5, 6, 7 pounds.
MK: Washing is the final step before the horseradish is sent for processing to be ground and made into sauces. Five people are in front of a conveyor belt inspecting the root by hand.
(Sound of horseradish being washed and put in containers)
KB: The horseradish is washed in here and then it comes out here under this belt for a final sort and it goes through a magnet and a metal detection process, and then goes into totes and is transported to Silver Springs for processing.
MK: So how much horseradish do you think goes through this belt in a day?
KB: In a day, anywhere from 10 to 40,000 pounds a day,
MK: After washing we move to one of two root coolers. This is where the horseradish is stored. Between the two buildings there is around 4 million pounds of horseradish.
(Sound of the root cooler)
MK: What are you doing right now?
KB: Peeling off the skin off the radish for you to try some.
MK: Are you going to try some too?
KB: I sure can.
MK: Is it going to be spicy?
KB: It should be spicy.
MK: Are we going to do this together?
MK: Oh, boy, yeah. I think I took too big of a bite.
KB: Yeah, this stuff has a little heat in it.
MK: It’s like kind of coming through your nose, very pungent. Oh my. I took a little too much. But it tastes good.
KB: Yeah, this is very good.
MK: Your eyes are watering.
(Laughter)
MK: Kyle says the strong flavor is actually a defense mechanism the vegetable produces to deter animals from eating it. The crop and its lifecycle are unusual, but so is the machinery. Here is Kyle describing the planting machine, which is an altered potato planter.
KB: As the planter drives through the field, there’s a little bell on there that dings.
(Sound of the dinging bell)
KB: And every time that the bell dings, the guys that are planting grab a seed and drop it down that tube right there and into the ground.
MK: No,wait, hold on. So, yeah, there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine seats, literally, on the planter and a person sits and drops an individual seed down the tube every time.
KB: Yep, eight seats, eight people planting, and then one guy moving the boxes around keeping seed stock in front of everybody, and then another guy driving the tractor. So it’s a 10-person process. We plant anywhere from 25 to 30 acres a day on our best days.
MK: Like potatoes, the seeds of horseradish are snippets of the plant and Kyle said people are cutting roughly 4 million seeds annually.
MK: I mean, I had no idea that this farm existed. Like, when people come to do tours, are they, like, “Oh, global epicenter of horseradish. Who knew?”
KB: Yeah, we do get that reaction. People know about the horseradish, but they don’t realize everything that goes into it. All the behind-the-scenes stuff, and I think that’s true for most products that you consume: There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that people don’t realize goes into it.
MK: Mackenzie Krumme. Wisconsin Public Radio.
