AaronN,
They remind me very much of hunting Hungarian Partridges in the sugar beets before hare and pheasant season opened in Germany. Good memories, wish I could do it again. Your mention of rutabagas reminded me of a story my old scout master told of the time his squad was trapped behind the German lines in the battle of the bulge. They were out of food and came upon a pile of what they thought was rutabagas. He said they couldn't boil them long enough to eat them. After living there, I decided it must have been a pile of "feed beets"(Futter Rueben).
Mike