A Better Mousetrap (or Brussels Sprout Trimmer)

It's one of those things most people (including me) have not thought about: how do you get a Brussels sprout off the stalk it grows on, especially when you grow a lot of them, as farmers do?

Did you even know they grow on a stalk?

Our local Hmong farmers of the Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA) spend a lot of their time doing manual work with their families to prep their sprouts for farmers markets each weekend in the fall. Together, the families grow 30,000–40,000 pounds a year, according to the Star Tribune.

And how those sprouts get from stem to shopping bag will soon be changing, because engineering students at St. Thomas University have developed a prototype trimming machine that not only cuts the buds off, but sorts them by size as well.

The new machine can trim two stalks a minute,while keeping to food safety standards and being cheap to produce.

It seems like there's so little good news in the world sometimes. I thought I would take a second to celebrate this small thing that will make the lives of some hard-working people a bit better.


Photo by Shari L. Gross, Star Tribune