Sunchoke Harvest part 1

It was a beautiful day - sunny, no wind, temps in the high forties. I headed out into the garden after lunch, pitchfork in hand, to harvest sunchokes. The other common name, Jerusalem Artichoke, is a mispronunciation of the native American name for these perennial sunflowers.
I knew the harvest would be substantial, because the flower stalks were lushly leaved and shot up to eight feet before blooming in late September.
But I was amazed by the masses of giant tubers I uncovered in a two foot square bed. Rabbits love sunchoke foliage, and for the past three years I'd fought a losing battle to keep them from gnawing the plants to the ground. I finally realized they were planted too close to the fence line. My basenji Sol keeps the bunnies on the run near his doghouse at the center of the yard, but out on the perimeter of the garden they can sneak in and out under the fence.
After eight months behind a fence, the tubers were, as the British say,  'chock a block'
Here's a pic of the first clump I pulled up:

And here's the final pile of tubers next to the bed they came out of:

Here they are washed-- at least 30 pounds-- I had trouble lifting this tub:

I took a big broken tuber in and fried it up in butter and olive oil with a bit of onion, and it was delicious, with a gentle sweet flavor, and a nice textural contrast between the soft center and crunchy exterior.
Then I waited for the gas. Sunchokes have a nickname - 'fartichokes'. The inulin in them can cause a lot of gas in people without the right probiotic gut bacteria.
Do I have the right stuff, intestinally speaking? It appears so. This modest portion caused no more that some mild 'wind'. Apparently sunchokes dug later in the winter cause less distress because they gradually change chemically in the cold soil. After all the dire warnings on the internet -'do not grow these', 'I put them all on the compost pile'- I am optimistic that I can eat my way through my harvest of sunchokes this winter.  Did I mention there is another big patch of them elsewhere in the garden? Hmm.. any one want some sunchokes? Updates to follow.....