Talking FACS
Host: Brooke Jenkins, Extension Specialist for the Nutrition Education Program
Guest: Ashley Oldfield, White Oak Pumpkin Patch
Special Edition
0:00 Welcome to Talking FACS; what you need to know about family, food, finance and fitness. Hosted by the University of Kentucky Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Program, our educators share research knowledge with individuals, families and communities to improve quality of life.
0:20 BROOKE JENKINS: Hi and welcome to Talking FACS; behind the recipe. I'm Brooke Jenkins, Extension Specialist for the Nutrition Education Program. Today, we are going behind our plated up Kentucky proud recipe; pumpkin apple muffins. This is a wonderful recipe that is just highlighting all of the tastes of the season. It's full of pumpkin and apples and cinnamon and honey.
And today we're going to talk about pumpkin a little more in-depth and highlight it and visit a local pumpkin farm to learn more about growing pumpkins and connecting YOU with this wonderful seasonal crop.
It's in season now and so, it's great to purchase these fresh pumpkins. We can cook them up and puree it and use it on all sorts of recipes like the one that we are focusing on today. Pumpkins are often used for fall decorations, but they're so nutritious.
Today, we are visiting the White Oak Pumpkin Patch and we have with us Ashley Oldfield, who is one of the owners of the Pumpkin Patch here in Martin County, Kentucky.
So, Ashley, today we are focusing on learning more about pumpkins. We're talking about a recipe; pumpkin apple muffins, but there are so many ways that you can cook with pumpkins, you know, breads and soups and just roasting seeds and so forth. So, you grow lots of pumpkins here.
1:48 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: Correct. We do.
1:50 BROOKE JENKINS: So, what's your favorite way to prepare pumpkin?
1:52 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: So, we recommend you use the Gerideau pumpkin if you're going to be cooking with pumpkin. It's a bluish-greenish skin on the outside, but inside is a very deep orange; really, really rich. It makes a beautiful pie.
We use it also to make pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, pretty much anything. That's what our go-to is. We also really enjoy cooking with butternut squash. It's very rich. It's so good with sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg.
A lot of people have a misconception that a jack o’lantern is what you would cook a pie with, but truly you could use a pie pumpkin, which is a smaller pumpkin that looks like a jack o’lantern or the Gerideau.
2:35 BROOKE JENKINS: You have a lot of pumpkins available here at your farm.
2:39 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: We do. We've raised over 50 varieties of pumpkin, squash, gourds and other seasonal decorations like Indian corn, fodder, straw and hay.
2:52 BROOKE JENKINS: When folks come to your pumpkin patch, what do you think they're looking for?
2:55 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: I think that a good majority are just looking for nostalgia. They're looking for a really wholesome family activity. I think that agritourism is a bigger part of our business at this point. People came to take hayrides, feed the cattle, enjoy the animals and things like that.
3:15 BROOKE JENKINS: So, they are missing the opportunity of eating these pumpkins that they're taking home with them.
3:18 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: Exactly.
3:19 BROOKE JENKINS: We do have some recipes that they could use to think beyond just using pumpkins for decoration and think about how they could prepare them and use the flesh of the pumpkin for different types of recipes.
3:34 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: Absolutely.
3:35 BROOKE JENKINS: And so that's one of our goals is to try to get folks to perhaps think more in terms of that. Hopefully, we can start making the connection between these big pumpkins and using them for food instead of just focusing on them for decoration. We can do both. So, tell us a little bit about your farm and how it got started.
3:55 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: So, this is actually my husband's family's farm. They've been here over 100 years. I grew up in Lexington.
So, I've been here about 16 years. And a few years after I moved here, I was getting my degree in nursing. Actually, I was finishing it up, and my husband's family had quit raising tobacco.
So, we were just brainstorming and my mother always took us to pumpkin patches growing up in the Bluegrass and I saw that big barn and all this land and I thought, “You know”, my mom actually came up with the idea, but we thought, “Hey, let's just raise two acres and see what happens”.
So, the first year we raised two acres and we sold them off a wagon; my grandmother, Wanda and I, in the rain. And it was just so much fun watching the people stop and pick up their pumpkin. And I thought, “You know, maybe next year we'll open up the barn and we could stock it with pumpkins and raise more and offer some activities and things”.
So, the second year we cleaned out half the barn, which was a major feat with my husband. Of course, he didn't want to get rid of all this stuff. We managed to get half of it cleaned out and we filled it with the pumpkins we grew. I think we raised five acres that year. We put up a swing set and started hay rides and then after that we adjust each year; I've added and added and we've see these families come for the last seven or eight years and we've watched their kids grow up and it's just been such a magical thing for us. We really, really loved it.
5:28 BROOKE JENKINS: How many visitors do you have to your farm during the pumpkin season?
5:33 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: Several thousand. We typically do about five thousand field trip children a year. And then on the weekends, I would say anywhere from 1 to 3000 people on a busy weekend.
5:46 BROOKE JENKINS: And really, this pumpkin patch is the only one for several surrounding counties.
5:52 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: Yeah, not many.
5:53 BROOKE JENKINS: Not that many. It's a great location and it's fast and rural. I know our family times out here. Every year we love coming out here. So, we appreciate having something so nearby for us. So, it's wonderful.
And when you're working with your clients, what do you like most about connecting with them? What's the most meaningful for you?
6:12 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: As I mentioned earlier, I have watched the children grow up and got to see them each year and speak with their parents and it is really meaningful. It's just awesome to have repeat customers and people who believe in your product enough to come back.
As a matter of fact, we have employed a lot of high schoolers over the years and several of them started volunteering when they were 12 or 11 and now they're juniors and seniors in high school.
We recently hired someone from Salyersville and I can just remember her coming with her parents as a little kid and through the years and now she's all grown up and working. And so, I think just connecting with the customers and watching their families grow.
7:00 BROOKE JENKINS: Do a lot of your customers ask you about how to grow pumpkins? Are they interested in agriculture side of thing?
7:06 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: They are. A lot of our customers will select a very broad variety and so they can take them home, use them for the fall and then they save the seeds and plant them or throw them over the hill and they'll all come up next year.
So, we have quite a bit of that. We also raise zinnias, a bunch of different varieties and that's sort of our trademark in my mind. This year, they didn't do very well, but typically, all of our fence rows are covered in beautiful bright flowers. So, we always give people scissors and a bag so that they can cut some and save and sell them for their gardening next year.
7:41 BROOKE JENKINS: Do a lot of folks try to grow their pumpkins the next year or are they seed savers and they like to...
7:48 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: I think there are several and they are successful; the customers that try to grow them on a larger scale. So, we always give them pointers because we love to. Obviously, we cannot service the amount of people that come through with what we grow on the farm.
We raise about 10 acres and then we buy the rest. We try to buy local as much as we can. And then so, I'm always happy to give pointers on how to grow pumpkins are tricky. Especially in our region, cucurbits in general don't like wet soil. And when it's really wet the fungus goes wild and things like that. So, I do give advice on how to grow them.
8:30 BROOKE JENKINS: So, if you had a family and they wanted to grow like one pumpkin plant next year, how would they do that?
8:38 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: Well, they would need to prepare their soil.
8:44 BROOKE JENKINS: Can they be grown in a container; do you think?
8:45 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: They can for so long. And then once they get four or five inches tall, you would need to transplant them into the ground.
8:53 BROOKE JENKINS: So, you have to have a little space to grow them.
8:55 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: Yeah, definitely.
8:56 BROOKE JENKINS: And then they take off and go crazy.
8:58 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: They do, hopefully.
9:00 BROOKE JENKINS: That's what we want; right?
What do you wish that people knew about farming?
9:03 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: Farming for me is therapeutic. It's a way to stay in touch with the earth, work out your anxieties. Connecting in nature is so important. I think that people might not fully get to experience that.
There are so many kids that come to the farm, although they live in a rural community, they don't experience farm life. So, it's just awesome to kind of show them that you reap what you sow in a sense. You have to work hard. I mean, obviously there's going to be obstacles when you're farming; dealing with the weather and things like that and the cattle getting in your pumpkin or your corn. But I just think it's a good wholesome way of life.
9:47 BROOKE JENKINS: What do you wish that people knew about eating locally?
9:51 ASHLEY OLDFIELD: Well, I'm a firm believer in shopping locally. Putting back into our community, I think, is extremely important. Why not eat locally and support your local farmer and invest back in your community? I just think it's a reinvest in your community. I just think it's very important.
10:11 BROOKE JENKINS: Of course, pumpkins you can buy them at the store, but it's also readily available in many communities throughout Kentucky. So, we encourage folks to get out to their local farms and see what healthy options are available to them there.
And if you don't have a place like that in your community, I look for pumpkin in stores, because you can always use your fresh pumpkins that you may have left over from your decorating season and you can use those for making pumpkin puree and using it in a lot of recipes. But also if that's not available or if it's out of season, then canned puree is also a good option.
So, of course we want you as consumers to just think about the nutritional benefits of pumpkin. Think about recipes that you can use pumpkin in. You know, pumpkin is a good substitute for a lot of different purees and recipes. You could substitute it for sweet potatoes or butternut squash and that sort of thing, in your recipes.
So, be creative when you're trying out new recipes. But today, we are so happy to have you here, Ashley, to talk about how to grow pumpkins, what that means and hopefully, folks will be more ready to come out to pumpkin farms and pick up their produce and take it home and prepare this tremendous recipe.
So, for the recipe, check us out on our website and thank you for being with us.
11:38 Thank you for listening to Talking FACS. We deliver programs focusing on nutrition, health, resource management, family development and civic engagement.
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