Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, New York. This week Mark writes: Although it's Friday the 13th, things seem relatively stable here on the farm. The coyotes have returned, but the calf is sticking close by his mama and has not so far been attacked again. The sheep were by and large cooperative during Bruce McCord’s expert shearing last weekend. It’s always disorienting for them and for us, as the lambs and ewes have to baaa and sniff for several hours to reconnect with each other, while we have to get used to the new colors that emerge on their maturing coats. Shearing also reveals surprises sometimes, such as the engorged udder of a ewe who missed lambing this spring but is obviously about to grace us with a birth any day now. The pigs have been put on a special diet, including a truckload of squash and pumpkins and boxes of apples, to lose weight, increase their salt and mineral uptake, and hopefully farrow more prolifically in the spring. And our poultry, now in their glory, seem blissfully unaware of their impending date with destiny. What a nice contrast this is to the ferment in the outer world. Not just the world events we all fret over, but also the intense contention around agriculture in the press of late. The New Yorker had a long review of a book attacking as hypocrisy Michael Pollan’s justifications for eating meat. A Times Op-Ed by the owner of Niman Ranch, espousing the environmental benefits of grass-fed beef and pastured turkeys, drew fire in the letters column from every imaginable direction. Even the Times food section turned its front page this week into a mock-vitriolic debate between an afficionado of heritage turkey and a denigrator who argued that turkey, even of the heritage breed, free range, organically fed variety, like ours, is basically an inedible hurdle to be endured only to get to the all important vegetables and stuffing of the Thanksgiving feast. I’d rather step out of the fray a bit, and espouse the virtues of one element in our fall vegetable harvest which I hope will be non-contentious—the cheese pumpkin. More precisely, the Long Island cheese pumpkin. What, you may ask, is a cheese pumpkin, and how is it different from the jack-o-lantern pumpkin we had on our front stoop this Halloween? Not surprisingly, there are devotees, such as the Long Island Seed Project, whose web site provided much of the following information, and scholars, such as those at the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization and the University of Illinois, whence came the rest, who would be happy to inform you. It turns out that the cheese pumpkin is part of an entirely different species (Cucurbita moschata) from the autumn gold and standard orange varieties (Cucurbita pepo) used for jack-o-lanterns. It is more closely related to Hubbard and butternut squash than it is to the jack-o-lantern. The cheese pumpkin shares the tan skin color and the more orange flesh of the squash. The oldest archaeological remains of C. Moschata found to date have been in Northwestern Mexico (4900 to 3500 B.C.), Peru (3000 B.C.) and Tikal, Guatemala (2000 B.C.). These vegetables proved popular and spread widely. One variety, the Seminole Pumpkin, was cultivated by pre-Columbian native Americans in Florida. C. Moschata appeared in seventeenth century European botanical drawings and by the nineteenth century varieties were being cultivated in India, Java, Angola and Japan. It likes very warm and wet places, and I attribute our nice crop this year to this summer’s bountiful moisture. The Long Island cheese pumpkin variety we raise was developed at least as far back as the early 19^th century, and was extremely popular, especially in Long Island and New Jersey, until the 1960s. It is now making a comeback, thanks in part to groups like the Long Island Seed Project. Other facts about the cheese pumpkin: Why is it called "the cheese pumpkin?Because its relatively flat shape and tan skin make it look like a wheel of cheese. Why would you buy it in preference to the round bright orange pumpkin?Because it cooks better and tastes way better, and it makes superlative pumpkin pies. We feed C. pepo to our pigs. We eat C. moschata ourselves. Indeed, cheese pumpkins have much smoother flesh, are much less stringy, and often have higher sugar content than C. pepo. Last weekend we had a scrumptious pumpkin puree with dinner. This weekend is pumpkin soup. Next week, of course, we’ll have pumpkin pie to end our Thanksgiving meal. Nutritional note: Pumpkins in general are great. They are loaded with beta carotene—a cup of cooked pumpkin supplies over 25% of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A. They also have vitamin C (nearly 10% of RDA) and lots of potassium, but zero cholesterol and barely any fat. That cup of cooked pumpkin has under 25 calories. —Mark Scherzer
