Fall Farm Tour Part I

 It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!!!

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to go on a farm tour through Eastern Wyoming College's Community Education program. Friends of mine who run the berry farm near Henry, Nebraska first told me about the day-long tour, and I was happy to see them on the bus with the rest of the tour members. It will probably come as no surprise to anyone who's heard me talk about the demographic breakdown of the panhandle that I was the youngest person on the tour by a good decade. No matter...I met a busfull of friendly and interesting folks, and had a wonderful time despite being grandchild age of most of the passengers.

The EWC bus picked the Nebraska contingent up at 7:45am in the Kmart parking lot and we were off to our first stop: Mark Ferrari Specialty Coffee in Oshkosh, Nebraska. Yup, you read that correctly. There is, in fact, a specialty coffee roastery in the small town of Oshkosh. If you've never been to Oshkosh before, it's between Lisco and Lewellen, on highway 26.  Slow down once you pass the Cabella's distribution center, roll down your windows, and smell the air for the scent of burnt toast. That's the indicator that coffee is being roasted. Stop by the roastery and gift shop for a pastry and a cup of 100% pure Kona coffee.

The fancy, hopper-loading, coffee roaster and cooling pan!

Yup, not only is there a specialty coffee roastery in Oshkosh, there's a Kona coffee roastery in Oshkosh. Mark Ferrari, the owner, grew up on a Kona coffee plantation on the Big Island of Hawai'i. He and his business partner Mike, who grew up in Oshkosh, relocated here in 2007, and have been roasting and selling Kona and other fine coffees ever since. We got a tour of the roastery, and learned the details of the process starting with the coffee plants and ending with a nice, fresh, cup of Kona coffee. Here's their website for some more information...too bad the site doesn't yet come with smell functions! http://markferraricoffee.com 

Our next stop was Purdy Punkin Farm in Brule, NE, just south and east of Big Springs, NE. They started off with only a few acres of pumpkins about 15 years ago, and have since expanded to the 750 acres of pumpkins and gourds that they grow today. Before you sit back in wonder at the size of a 750 acre farm, I should first tell you that cucurbits are grown on a small portion of their arable land. The farmers at Purdy Punkin Farm farm over 8,000 acres of corn, beans, sugar beets, and alfalfa, along with the pumpkins.   

Boxes of pumpkins waiting to be shipped 

  out to Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and 

Menard's stores around the country.

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Seems everything is going pink for breast 

cancer research these days, including these special pink pumpkins, a portion of whose sales proceeds go to various breast cancer research organizations.

Pumpkins and gourds are not the only products grown and sold here; Purdy Punkin's also sells straw bales and cornstalks, for those who want that down home country fall feel, but live somewhere far away from cornfields. Like Chicago. No, seriously. The Home Depot stores in Chicago always sell out of cornstalks and continually request more throughout the season. 

Humans are so odd...

After touring the boxing/shipping warehouses, we wandered over to the wash, wax, and bag station for decorative gourds. These next photos show the path from truck to box for the decorative gourds, and is a rather ingenious remodeling of an apple washing and waxing machine. Once they are cleaned and waxed, the gourds are sorted for damaged spots and size, and the passable ones are bagged in groups of six for shipping to stores. Unsellable gourds are fed to the cows on the farm. Don't worry...they use apple wax for the gourds, which is edible (you've eaten it yourselves on store bought apples), and, given the drought this year, the cows are probably ecstatic about their cucurbit diet.

Gourd tractor

Converted apple washing conveyance

Gourd Bath Time!

Washed gourds only!

Tumbling up out of the bath!

The fancy dirt-knocker-offer, polishing, waxing machine

Waxed and polished gourds get sorted before bagging

Clean and shiny gourds ready for travel

And now I give you the newest version of the pet rock: the pet pie pumpkin!!!

The roadside stand display at Purdy Punkin's Farm. Lots of edible squash, inedible gourds, Indian corn, and the pumpkins that have deviated from the, "fall decoration" path and have fallen onto the "whimsy" or "kid craft project" path.

They also have a few acres that are their grab-bag pumpkin patch where visitors and school groups can wander through all sorts of squash and pick their own. I came home with a small orange hubbard who has since been roasted with other vegetables and consumed. It was a very tasty squash and, thankfully, very small for a hubbard so it actually fit inside my oven. To be fair, my oven is also of the very small variety. 

Grab-bag pumpkin patches are the BEST EVER!!!

Is it edible? I have no idea. But it appears to be growing mossy warts.

I'm working on putting up photos from our last stop on the farm tour...there were just getting to be too many photos for one post. And then there're those garden photos to share, and canning adventures to write about, and the requisite adorable Pavlov photos...