Congratulations! 8lb, 1oz and 18 1/2″ long…pink banana squash!
One astute commenter noted that my family’s probably not hurting for Vitamin A in our diets, what with the monster winter squash harvest this year. And it’s true, we’re awash in the things. It’s okay, really it is, especially since the school garden’s squash patch was a bust (deer predation) so I have a…somewhat willing population to whom I can feed the things. AND: happily: all our animals (except T-bell the goat) eat squash.
Surprisingly easy to slice, especially when you have a great hand-made chopper like this one
I do love squash, always have. But I find that, as a gardener, my esteem of any one vegetable goes up or down in direct proportion to how well it grows for me. Squash is quite the flatterer, so…I love it. I’ve got a very fox-and-the-grapes attitude about things that don’t grow so well for me (i.e.,”bah, Brussels sprouts, who needs ‘em) and it proves to me that if nothing else I am terribly…human.
The now-indispensable food mill. Usually reserved for separating tomatoes from their seeds and peels, and stewed whole apples during the saucing sessions, I realized how handy this thing was once I killed my immersion blender. It’s now out all the time, especially to cream hot soups and hot squash. And, unlike the damned hand-held stick blender, I could never break this thing.
But my family is on the “likes” squash part of the spectrum: it ain’t “love.” I therefore only feed them one squash per week, if that. Mostly, we love creamy squash soup (with a splash of curry), but it also finds its way into baked goods. Only butternut is tolerated in other forms (pan-roasted, say; or candied) and luckily I planted plenty of those, too.
5 cups of puree for us people! The basement worms get the skins, the poultry and bunnies vie for the seeds and pulp…a true no-waste food.
Sunday, though, I brought out one of the pink bananas. They were one of the first escape artists of the squash patch (up and over the fence, 16′ away) and one plant put out, what, three squash total of similar size to this one. They’re really easy to cut up (bonus!) and I found the chickens and turkeys appreciated the seeds and pulp if I chopped it for them. I baked these, cut-side down, arranged diagonally across my two largest rimmed cookie sheets. Scooped, run through the food mill, and sweet! Its great advantage appears to be its readiness to be cut into rings, and baked a la most acorn squash. It did take a bit longer to fruit out than many of the other winter squash I had, and Fedco says it is not terribly reliable in really short summer areas but, well…if you like winter squash, you might want to try to grow this one this year.
We held the party at a 1930s lodge in a local park. Beautiful day in the 60s, everyone played until supper
Yesterday was Move the Squash Day. I left them to ripen/cure 
Here’s a closer pic of the wheelbarrowload of blues. In here you’ll find the Oregon heirloom Sweet Meat (bottom left), the familiar Blue Hubbard (dead center, top right and middle right), and the unfamiliar folded-over three-lobed Triamble, from seed from 
Next up is the load of orange squash. The big ones are Galeux d’Eysenes, surprisingly wart-free; the greens are unripe pie pumpkins and there are also a couple of kuri/kabocha squash in here too. The yellow one in the center? That’s (seriously) an eight-ball zucchini. Whoops!
Last up is the butternut squash. It was a good year for butternuts.
Middle-school aged children, therefore, were to live and work on a farm. Under the tutelage of adult farmers, the children would be able to see how the business of a farm worked, and thus learn the math, chemistry, biology, marketing, and various skills associated with a productive farm livelihood.
Early adolescence is a tough time all around. Frankly, I do not think I learned a thing between 12 and 14, except how to get into trouble. Becoming aware of yourself in the scheme of the world, the great “what do I do, what do I know” abstraction that is oncoming adulthood: it’s tough, especially when you have one foot still firmly planted in childhood. Erdkinder removed that abstraction, because earth children were valuable assets to the farm. The responsibilities assumed by the children were adult ones, thus creating an immense sense of accomplishment, and an immense boost to the children’s self-esteem.
And strategizing the picking, figuring mechanical things out (like the grape squisher above), working together to accomplish these tasks, getting over one’s fear of bees and bugs, and then figuring out how to market their harvest of juice: granted, they’re not LIVING at our farm but they certainly learned from it.
Galeux d’Eysenes and Triamble winter squashes
In the foreground are six quart-sized bags of tomatillo salsa concentrate: they need another quart of chopped tomatoes to make salsa in the heat index that schoolkids will tolerate. Tomatillo-based salsas don’t can well: it’s better to freeze concentrates like these and add stuff later (plus, our school’s freezer isn’t terribly large). The 23 quarts and one pint you see in the back row are black bean/corn salsa. These have been pressure canned, and having noshy tidbits like corn and beans in there means the salsa comes through the rigors of the canner quite well, no mush.
The U.S.D.A. in its infinite wisdom pays farmers to NOT produce food. To keep the prices high, the consolidation of growers of (let’s give a relevant example) sour cherries all stick their fingers to the wind and decide how MUCH of their harvest to pick on a given year. This year, it’s 60%, which means that 40% of your crop is not to be sold and must rot on the tree.
About a third of our harvest
KathunkKathunkKathunk: This 1937 pitter can process a ton of cherries in an hour
Daikon radish pickles: RECIPE NOW IN COMMENTS
Planting red set onions. Set onions (little bags of seed onions you’ll find at garden stores now) can be eaten at any size, and the greens can be eaten at any time too. They’ll never get as large as onions you grow from seed but they’ll do in a pinch.
Lettuce seedlings can take a bit of frost, and the smaller they are, the hardier they are.
Wheelbarrows do hold more than just topsoil
Egyptian Walking onions
One big stack of work
Glad you came to visit!
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