How to cook a pumpkin (or squash).

Some of you out there will look at this post and think, "duh... it's not rocket science." But many people really have no clue what to do with a freshly harvested pumpkin... other than carve a face in it and place a candle inside on Halloween. This year, I grew an abundance of pumpkins and winter squash, and have already sold most of the heirloom varieties at the market. Most customers were buying them for decorations - but I made sure to tell them that they shouldn't just throw it out when they were done. Bake it! Make a pie, some pumpkin soup, pumpkin bars, pumpkin roll... the list goes on (and if you don't believe me, just come to the Circleville Pumpkin Show Oct 20-23... you will see the many amazing uses of pumpkin).

So here is a little post to educate you on how to bake a pumpkin or squash. I used the "Speckled Hound" pumpkins which grew beautifully this year. They are prized for their buttery yellow flesh. I made a delicious pumpkin/sweet potato soup with this. Too bad I can't provide the recipe here because... well... I didn't use one. But it was delicious, and there are many recipes out there to try. I recommend using sweet potato rather than sugar... it's all the sweetness a good pumpkin soup needs! Another side note about these "Speckled Hound" pumpkins: They were the secret ingredient in the Ohio Local Foods Week Iron Chef competition on Sunday night! I guess you could say I am a bit proud.

First step: Chop the pumpkin in half. Yes, I said Chop. Slice. Carve. Whatever method you like.
Second step: Use a large spoon to scoop out the seed and rind. If using an heirloom... save the seeds to plant next year!
Third step: Place the pumpkin or squash in a baking dish filled with about a half inch of water.
Fourth Step: Bake in a 350 degree oven until the flesh becomes soft and squishy. This pumpkin took about 40 minutes. Just open the oven every now and then and prick it with a fork to test it. You can also prick it (like you would a potato) to allow it to cook it more quickly and evenly. Don't take it out of the oven until it is soft all the way through. It is now time to scoop out the flesh, leaving the shell behind.
The next step is to take this pumpkin flesh and puree it in your food processor. You will probably need to add a little milk or water to get a nice smooth consistency. Since I made soup, I made mine pretty fine textured. If you're cooking a pie, you might want to leave it a bit more stiff, like canned pumpkin you would buy in the store. As you can see the light yellow color of the Speckled Hound is quite different from many darker red pumpkins.
Final Step: Take the pumpkin skin and rind out to the chickens (or your compost bin if chickens are unavailable). And there you have it! You have cooked your very own pumpkin! Much more rewarding than using canned pumpkin from the store. And besides... wasn't there a huge canned pumpkin shortage this year?
Come on down to the farm and pick out a pumpkin to cook up. You can even bring your rinds to our chickens when you're all done.

Produce too beautiful to eat...

As I scrolled down through the list of posts over the past few months I realized that I was missing something. Too much honey and flowers, and not enough produce. Sadly, the only post I did about the produce farm featured the floods we had in early June! So I have to show you all the beautiful bounty of Becky's produce farm here at Honeyrun. Purple carrots? Yes! Purple Carrots. Why not? Heirloom tomatoes also come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.
This was my favorite. Just look at the red and orange striations.
My favorite summer snack. My own little version of Brushetta, complete with fresh basil, olive oil, and Italian cheeses melted over top in the oven. Here I used Hillbilly and Amish Paste tomatoes, both of which are heirlooms.
And here is one of Becky's signature crops: Cherry Tomatoes! Sun golds are a farmer's market favorite; known for a burst of flavor that is sprightly sweet. They combine nicely with their more acidic and tart counterparts, the red cherry tomato. There's still time left to pick these up at the next farmer's market!

Honey Robbers

Isaac took the time on Friday to take some video of the bees as they were "robbing" the honey from the beeswax cappings. After we scrape the beeswax cappings off the frames in order to extract the honey, we leave them in the yard for the bees to clean up. They get really excited, and start "robbing" the honey in a frenzy of excitement. We think you'll get the picture when you watch this video...

August 2010 Honey Extraction

It's honey harvest time! I thought I would show you what honey extraction is all about! We are finally working in our new "honey house" with our new 33 frame extractor. It is so much quicker than the old 4-frame hand-crank extractor we used to use. Now we load it up, flip on a switch, and it spins the honey out on its own! But we still have the time-consuming task of scraping the beeswax cappings from each frame. When the bees are finished filling a frame with honey and it is at the perfect moisture level, they "cap it off" with beeswax.Here Isaac is getting ready to scrape off the cappings with a hive tool. The cappings fall into a tank below, where the extra honey drips down into a bucket, and the beeswax will later be cleaned, melted down, and used in projects such as soap, candles, etc.
We slide a warm knife against the frame to remove the beeswax.
Look at all the delicious honey ready to ooze out of the frame... it weighs about 5 pounds. This year's Summer honey has a very light color from the clover and Canadian thistle blooms.
The frame is placed in the extractor, and when it is full we will turn it on so the honey can spin out. We keep it spinning for about 15 minutes.
The honey drips down into a bucket below. This honey includes chunks of beeswax, pollen, and even dead bee parts. We have to put this through a large mesh strainer in order to bottle it, but other than that... there is no processing. Pure, raw, honey... straight from the beehive.
We will have some of this honey for sale this weekend at the North Market. Stop by our booth to sample some of the freshest honey in Central Ohio!

Wedding bells are ringing...

Did I say in one of the last posts that I would be posting to the blog every week? Oops....

Big things have been happening at Honeyrun Farm. Becky has been replanting her fields and managing the crops that managed to not get drowned out in the early Summer rain. And in the meantime, she also got married! (In Alaska, on a Glacier, nonetheless). Yes, I'm serious! Pictures to follow shortly. We welcome Greg Swingle to the Honeyrun Family. I have looked through all my files and can't find a picture of the two together, but you can check out his work at www.gregswingle.com.

Isaac has been busy making splits of our beehives, and I have been arranging and growing wedding flowers. We also have been bottling little jars of honey for wedding favors. It is such a useful gift for wedding guests (one that doesn't sit around the house forever). And since honey never spoils, you can keep it and crack it open for a taste on your 50th wedding anniversary.

When things slow down I will add more photos, recipes, and stories about farm life at Honeyrun. Which at this rate, might happen about mid-December. Thanks for your patience.

~Jayne

Wet.

Anyone who has been living in Ohio this Spring will know that it has been, to say the least, very wet. Becky's field was hit with a lot of rain and it seemed that the tile was clogged, which created a mucky, wet disaster. She lost all of her roots crops... turnips, beets, carrots, radishes, and even her potatoes. She lost her lettuces, some peppers and tomatoes, and some onions. I haven't yet heard if her sweet potatoes were damaged, but I really hope not... they are my favorite! Here are a few pictures of the damage... and these were taken 2 days after the heavy rains and after the field had drained quite a bit.

Becky plans to till everything under once it is dry enough and replant. That is pretty much her only choice. To see pictures of what it looked like right after it rained, click here.

Trying to create a ditch to allow the water to flow out of the fields.....

Introducing.... Bee Pollen!

We are offering a new product this year and I am so excited about it! Bee Pollen! So... what do you do with bee pollen, you ask? Eat it! Pollen itself is the male seed of flowers, required to fertilize the plant. It is used as a nutritional supplement that some people swear by. It contains an abundance of vitamins, minerals, proteins, amino-acids, and more. We have seen claims for using it for energy, weight loss, alleviating depression and migraine headaches, preventing cancer, etc...etc...etc... We won't make any of those claims here, but I must say I think this fresh pollen is quite tasty. Other times that I have tried pollen I thought it tasted like hay, in a chalky form that is kind of hard to swallow. The pollen we have been harvesting still has the chalky texture, but it has been surprisingly sweet and flavorful. It is great for adding to smoothies, sprinkling on salads, or just eating by the spoonful (followed by a drink of OJ).Here is a close-up picture where I tried to capture all the colors and textures of the different kinds of pollen. The bees gather pollen in little 'pollen sacs' on their legs. They use the pollen to feed to the baby bees. (Don't worry, we make sure there is plenty left for them).
It is harvested through the use of a pollen trap that goes on the bottom of the hive where the bees enter. See the unpainted wooden part where all the bees are trying to enter? As they enter through the pollen trap, the pollen is knocked off their legs and lands on a screen below. We empty the screen daily, and it is amazing to see the varieties of colors that accumulate throughout the day. You can tell the bees are gathering from different sources throughout the day, as the colors form in layers throughout the trap.
As I type, Isaac is out in the apiary pulling honey supers that will be extracted later this week. We are hoping to get a good harvest of Black Locust honey this week, which will be ready for market by Saturday. Maizy loves to help us "sort" honey as we bottle it. She is only 10 months old so honey is not a regular part of her diet yet... but we can tell she is counting down the days. She watches us eat honey with a look in her eyes that says, "I know that's something good... and I am going to get it." Until then... keep sorting those bottles Maizy. We will have a nice honey cake for you when you turn one!