Here in the upper Midwest, Halloween means the closing of most farm markets and vegetable stands.
A farm market near me had all of the pumpkins for free on Halloween. Along with the big Jack-o-lantern pumpkins (which are edible, but somewhat tasteless and watery), they also had blue Jarrahdales, some Hubbard squash, a big bin of Galeux d’Eysines (the orange/pink ones with warts), kobochas, and a couple kuri squash. I went just as they were closing and loaded the trunk of my tiny car. They also had buttercup, delicata, sweet dumpling and spaghetti squash selling in multiples for a dollar. Five dollars filled the back seat. I have enough now for meals, pies, muffins, soups, pancakes and smoothies for a long while. The large ones get roasted and the leftovers frozen. I’ve also canned several jars of cubed pumpkin for quick additions to curries, and soups.
Besides filling up the cool closet by the back door with squash, I’ve been putting the garden to bed. After a frost last week, we dug up the parsnips, turnips and beets. The turnips are in paper bags with the squash. The parsnips went into the basement in buckets of damp sand along with the brussels sprouts that got pulled up whole. That way I can just snap off enough for the day’s meal when I want them.
The beets are canned in spices, sugar and vinegar -there is nothing better than spiced beets in January when you want some intense veggie flavor.
Besides the beets, we’ve been canning apples in various forms. Our neighbor again this year allowed us to finish picking his apple trees. This year he didn’t use very many of the apples, since he hadn’t sprayed them, and they were smaller, more buggy, and not uniform. That made them harder to work with for him, so more apples for us. We still were able to fill the large garden wagon half full of good apples, and we’ve been working at getting them stored. The nicest ones have gone into the cool cupboard for lunches and fresh eating.
I’m so happy to be able to eat great food that might otherwise go to waste. If we hadn’t picked the neighbor’s apples, they would have just fallen and gotten raked into the field across the road. I’ve gotten braver about asking people who have fruit trees and bushes if they would mind if we pick them in exchange for us raking up the fallen fruit. I’ve gotten nice pears, apples and plums that way in the past, as well as some wild grapes, currants and autumn olive berries from fence rows with the permission of the landowners.
This time of year is also great for spotting asparagus ferns in the ditches. They turn an intense gold color, sometimes with bright red seed pods that you can’t miss. Those locations get written down in my garden book for early spring foraging. And it gives you plenty of time to locate the landowner and get permission to forage on their land.
Whenever I see a fruit bush or tree, or any wild food I want to gather the next year, I write down its location in the back of my garden book, along with notes on whether I’ve spoken with owner, and if they’ve given me permission to come back year after year. This year the extra plums and cherries we picked from local trees added a couple of shelves of food to our canned stores. The apples will be even more, when we get finished with all of them. I’m almost looking forward to winter, because I know how very good they all will all taste in the depths of the dark part of the year. Pumpkin pancakes dotted with dried cherries we picked in the summer and smothered in warm applesauce is a treat to get anyone out of bed on a cold winter morning. I can almost hear my future self from February of 2018 calling back to me, “We’re gonna need more squash! More apples!”