This text is part of the special Pleasures notebook
Farmers will remember the summer of 2023 as one of the wettest in years. Many crops will have suffered from the large amounts of rain which fell in July, including cucurbits. A poor season that came at the wrong time, when squash were finally starting to find a place again on Quebecers’ plates.
“The season had started well,” sighs Josée Roy, owner of Ferme La Fille du roy in Sainte-Madeleine in Montérégie, who estimates having lost around 85% of her harvest this year. The germination of the plants was going well when the rainy days started to come one after the other.
“Squash prefers sun to water. The fields were flooded, the ditches were full. The plants, which are in clay soil, were bathed in water for a good two weeks,” she summarizes.
Same desolation for Pascale Coutu, owner of La Courgerie, a farm specializing in cucurbits in Sainte-Élisabeth, in Lanaudière. “We couldn’t pull the weeds because we couldn’t even get to the fields with the machinery because the ground was so wet. »
Result ? The plants, deprived of sunlight, produced fewer flowers (therefore fewer fruits) and much more foliage. They have gained height, making picking more difficult. The squashes that have managed to survive are waterlogged. They will keep less long, in addition to being less tasty.
Despite everything, we will have squash to cook this fall. Josée Roy simply invites people to consume their harvest quickly or to freeze it.
Popularity regained
It is only very recently that Quebecers have reconnected with the pleasure of eating squash, even though cucurbits have been part of our diet for a long time. These vegetables, mainly from Mexico, have always been the basis of the diet of many of Canada’s First Nations. Even today, cucurbits are among the most important vegetable crops in the country, along with potatoes, sweet corn, green peas, carrots and beans.
According to Josée Roy, the craze for this fruit-vegetable faded somewhere in the post-war period: “people got tired of it, for lack of recipes to cook them”.
It was the squash producing farms that also practiced agrotourism that really revived our interest in cucurbits, around twenty years ago. “U-pick has become an outdoor activity linked to fall,” confirms Pascale Coutu.
The woman who has been growing squash since 1999 also notes that social networks have greatly helped to popularize this production: “people come to take photos in the fields because the scenery is magnificent. Then they go pick their Halloween squash and pumpkins.”
And then, thanks to the efforts of squash producers to educate visitors about the many ways to consume the fruit of their labor, Quebecers increasingly understand that squash is not just a decoration, but first and foremost quite a nutritious and delicious food. Cakes, soups, muffins, stews: they now know how to cook it.
Next challenge: to discover the dozens of varieties that we know how to grow here, in Quebec. Because yes, there are many other things than butternut squash and spaghetti squash!
The five families of winter squash
This content was produced by the Special Publications team at Duty, relating to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part.