OF Dec Jan 2020

Putting the Winter
Back
in Winter Squash
Popular Commodity Looks to Make a Comeback on the Vegetable Market
BY STEVE ELLIOTT, Western SARE
For growers, it doesn’t matter
how much you harvest. What matters
is what you sell!
A good example of that came out of
Oregon recently, but applies broadly.
Growers were having trouble producing
and storing a crop for sale in the winter
into the early spring.
“We heard from farmers that they
weren’t making money on winter
squash as so much of it rotted in storage
in early fall,” explained Dr. Alex
Stone, the extension vegetable crop specialist
at Oregon State University. “We
investigated and found that in western
Oregon we have some particularly
aggressive fungi that rot squash.”
But storage rot wasn’t the only problem.
Consumer behavior played a big role as
well.
“Winter squash is nutritious and delicious,
but most people don’t eat very
much of it,” Stone said. “One reason is
that we can’t think of new ways to cook
it, and you can only eat so much squash
soup. Another reason is that many of
us grew up eating unripe acorn squash
and they just don’t taste very good. We
wanted to see if we could change that.
We wanted people to eat more squash
because it is delicious and good for
them and the environment.”
To accomplish that, Stone, with Lane
Selman of the Culinary Breeding
Network and others in her team of
researchers, chefs and grower collaborators
had several challenges:
• Identify squash varieties that
yielded well in western Oregon and
stored well under barn conditions
(western Oregon has mild, wet
winters.)
• Identify squash varieties that taste
good.
• Show people how to prepare squash
in new and interesting ways.
Stone got a grant from the Western
Sustainable Agriculture Research and
Education program, which is funded by
USDA, and began planting squash.
“We grew lots of winter squash varieties,”
she said. “We harvested them in
September and stored them – or threw
them out – through April. And we went
through that same process again the
next year, and then again the next year.
We stored them in both controlled environment
(temperature and humidity)
and barn (maintained above freezing)
conditions, and most stored longer in
the barn.”
One collaborator Stone had brought
into the project was Chef Timothy
Wastell, who tasted each variety as they
ripened in storage.
“Winter squash are meaty and can be
eaten as main courses instead of meat,
or blended with meat in main courses,”
Wastell explained. “They can also be
eaten raw in salads or cooked as side
dishes or even desserts. Squash diversity
– in texture, flavor, size and culinary
use – lets us come up with a diversity of
strategies for incorporating squash into
meals.”
After three seasons of growing, storing,
testing and tasting, the project team
launched a consumer-focused website
at eatwintersquash.com.
36 Organic Farmer December/January 2020