Here's my latest column for the newspaper:
Every autumn, the search begins for the perfect pumpkin in the patch: round and evenly shaped, bright orange, with a sturdy stem that curves just enough to give it character.
It is the pumpkin made for front porches, hayrides and photographs.
In Appalachia, the perfect fall squash historically looked a little different.
It was big, oddly shaped and not particularly orange. Its bottom was broad and bulbous, its neck long and sometimes crooked, and its pale skin was streaked with green.
It’s a squash made for feeding a family, keeping well beyond the fall harvest and moving easily between sweet and savory dishes.
Cushaw squash bears little resemblance to the picture-perfect pumpkins of fall, but it proves far more useful. That’s why it’s been around for so long.
The cushaw commonly grown in Appalachia belongs to the species “Cucurbita argyrosperma,” which was domesticated thousands of years ago in Mexico.
It traveled north long before European settlement and became an important part of Indigenous agriculture across portions of North America.
Appalachia was one of the places where cushaw found an enduring home. It became a familiar sight in gardens across the region.
Seeds were saved from one growing season for the next, shared with neighbors and handed down through families. With those seeds came the knowledge of when to plant, when to harvest and how to use it in family recipes.
Cushaw can be roasted, stewed or mashed. It can become soup, bread, butter and preserves. Add sugar, eggs, dairy and warm spices, and it becomes cushaw pie. Clean and roast the seeds, and it becomes a snack.
Or, maybe all of the above. A single large cushaw can easily weigh 10, 20 or even 30 pounds and yield several quarts of cooked, mashed squash — enough for soup, an entree and dessert, with plenty left over.
Cooked cushaw can be refrigerated for a few days or portioned and frozen for longer storage. An uncut cushaw can last even longer, keeping for weeks or even months in a cool, dry place with good air circulation.
In an era before refrigeration and supermarkets stocked with produce in January, a crop that could sit for weeks or months and then become dinner — or dessert — had clear value.
Butternut became nationally ubiquitous. Acorn became a supermarket staple. Pumpkin became the commercial symbol of fall. Cushaw remained something people knew because somebody in their family grew it.
Cushaw is a squash that modern agriculture largely passed over, but Appalachian gardeners sure didn’t.
