Gourd Vibrations

Every season has its bounty, like spring fiddleheads and ramps, summer stone fruit, and winter citrus, but there’s a reason fall is most associated with an abundant harvest. This fall season, we’ve got all the usual suspects of squash and gourds, ready to be drizzled and roasted, cut up into perfectly baked pies, or simply snacked on as they are. Because it’s fall, though, we’ve got some special varieties in the mix! 

Honeynut squash has been a fall favorite for a few years now, which is about as long as they’ve existed! Chef Dan Barber, most recently seen on Netflix’s Chef’s Table, as well as being the co-owner of Blue Hill in Manhattan, approached a Cornell University Professor in Plant Breeding and Genetics with a challenge—a better butternut. They could have gotten away with calling it a betternut, but the resulting produce was so sweet and nutty in flavor that we can’t begrudge its very fitting name. This baby-sized squash from Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative needs no peeling thanks to its thin skin, which also means it’s easy to cut. It even has three times the beta carotene of its parent vegetable! Try dry-roasting it to bring out its fullest flavor. 

That’s not all we’ve got coming in from Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative! There’s delicata squash, acorn squash, and the classic butternut squash, as well as crisp, sweet Gala apples to keep you coming back for more autumnal flavors. Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative has been our biggest go-to for local produce for a long time, with over a hundred small, organic-certified family farms working together to share resources and grow high-quality crops. 

For more local produce from small farms and orchards, we’ve got Goldrush apples and Shinsui Asian pears from Champlain Orchards in Shoreham, VT. Goldrush apples are crisp, tart, and at times even somewhat spicy; the Shinsui pear is round and bronze with an extra-crisp bite, and does very well in pies. (Psst: We'll be getting apple and pear ciders from Champlain soon, so keep an eye out!) Hefty Honeycrisp apples are coming to us from Mead Orchards, as well as Fuji apples from Migliorelli Farm, both upstate in Tivoli, NY. Last but certainly not least, expect the Bartlett pears from Weaver’s Orchard in Morgantown, PA, to be especially robust this season!