Where is the Gardens of Eagan Squash?

I am writing this in mid August when we are feasting daily on watermelon banquets. The melon pickers stagger in with truckloads heaped, bellies bulging, drunk from "testing" the sugar hearts. It still is human nature to feast in preparation for winter and famine. Right now it is hard to imagine ever being hungry.

I woke up this morning crying from a squash dream. In the dream our greenhouses were full to bursting with heavy, thick-skinned, glowingly gorgeous N.E. Blue Hubbards. I had cooked a heap of Hubbards and there were about 20 of us sitting around feasting on them. The skins had been basted in herb butter while baking and were crackly, tender, mouth melting. Each of us had a 20 lb. Hubbard on a platter in front of us and we were settling in for an all day squash feast. We kept reaching our forks out and sampling squash from another's lap and moaning with the pleasure of it. The entire party had a spiritual glow. Then I woke up and remembered, we disked the squash crop.

I still can't believe we lost the squash - first time in 29 years of organic growing. Squash has been the backbone of our farm plan for most of those years. While Martin is corn king, squash is my favorite. If I could only grow one thing it would be squash. I remember as we trialed and introduced each new variety. In 1974, the era of Grandma's Acorn with butter and brown sugar, Martin grew his first Delicata. New and foreign, he had trouble selling them and gave most of them away as samples. 28 years later, with 18 varieties, the specialties sell as quickly as the well-known standbys. Organic eaters in the Twin Cities take winter squash seriously. When I visit other Midwestern cities in fall, the grocery stores have small displays of unripe squash, 3-4 varieties.

All these years one indicator of fall has been the arrival of Gardens of Eagan squash at your local food co-op. Colorful, sweet flesh, fall food, comfort food - keeps for months meeting the Minnesota inner need to prepare for winter, and this year no squash.

What happened? Our area was hit with an invasion/a pestilence of squash beetles. Their arrival was similar to "Little House on the Prairie" type stories of grasshopper clouds descending on grain and all the pioneers going out and beating them off for 3 days with sticks and fire and cloth and when the three days ended and the people collapsed weary and exhausted the crop was lost anyway and the people starved in their dugouts. The insect part was similar here, but we won't starve. We had as arsenal, an organic plant extract that killed them, but an hour later there were even more new ones than before application. We walked through the fields with a hand flamer, burning the heavy spots; we didn't make a dent on them. They just kept coming and coming and coming.

Crop loss has always been a part of farming. To succeed long-term as a farmer, loss has to be planned in, budgeted for, accepted. With a diverse crop mix a farmer minimizes the chance of total loss. While tomatoes love hot and dry, kale thrives cool and wet. The weather usually suits some crops and not others - the perfect season is a rare treat. Before the years of mass transportation when people needed to eat locally, hungry winters were at times a reality. In the 1880's there was a year that summer never came. It froze every month. Famine was a reality. Now, in 2002, you will find squash shipped in from Colorado or California in your co-op display. It won't be local Gardens of Eagan squash but you will be able to purchase organic squash.

Pest populations swell and subside. In 1997 the Midwest had the highest corn borer population since the 50's. The next year there were very few. Hopefully the squash bugs will follow the same pattern and become a distant, unpleasant memory by next fall. Beyond hoping that they will just go away and leave us alone, we have done what we can on our own farm to limit a build up of pests from the population here this season. We went into the squash fields with a tractor mounted flame burner and burnt the bugs, then we disked the crop underground eliminating the source of food for late arrivals, destroying most of the bugs the flames missed and all egg masses. For next year's crop we have secured 20 acres of organic land 6 miles from our home farm to rotate our squash crop off the farm in case we have a population built-up here. Fortunately we are both optimists.

To close, one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes; "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." Insects can be like the weather, beyond human control. There is a whole lot of accepting going on. I can already see and taste next year's squash crop, mmmmmm.