A Pair of Fall Festivals, Part 2: Pumpkin Party

My mom tells me that 35 30.5 years ago, when she first moved to Switzerland, pumpkins were all but impossible to find - she had to grow her own plants in my grandmother's garden!  My, how times have changed.  On a day in September that was so warm it felt more like summer than fall, we drove 45 minutes north of Zurich to the tiny village of Berg am Irchel and the Baur family farm holding their annual pumpkin festival.  With over 150 varieties grown at this farm alone and every grocery store and seasonal menu full of them, it's hard to imagine autumn without pumpkins.

The first order of business when we arrived - lunch, of course!  There was more than just pumpkins on the menu - choices included burgers and sausages made of the farm's own veal, but it seemed inappropriate not to eat pumpkins at a pumpkin festival.  I went with a hearty bowl of the spiced soup.



After lunch, we started at the very beginning and walked out to the pumpkin patch behind the farm.







A highlight was the Calabash Tunnel, where light-green gourds hung from thin stalks entwined around wire mesh. I could hardly believe that the stalks didn't break under the heavy weight, but they were much tougher than they looked. When dried, the hollow fruit is often used to make rattles.



Back near the farmhouse, there was more pumpkin fun to be found.  A competition to guess how many pumpkins in the container...



...educational displays of the different families of pumpkin...



...a tasting station, where you could crunch on small pieces of raw pumpkin and observe with your senses the differences between Acorn, Marble, Butternut, and Jack O'Lantern varieties...



...and meet lots of grinning faces along the way!



Finally, we headed over to the market area and began the process of deciding which of the multitude of varieties to take home.  It was very, very difficult.  Even the cheat sheet the farm provided was little help - too many choices and too many fun names, in nearly as many languages as there are pumpkins! Yukigeshou, Lungha di Napoli, Crioula Pataka, or Citrouille de Touraine, anyone?







In addition to normal food-pumpkins, there were crates and boxes of small funky zierkürbisse, decorative pumpkins not meant for eating.





A few other products rounded out the little market area - pumpkin seeds, cider, and grape juice from this year's harvest.



We packed our purchased pumpkins into the car and took a last turn around the farm, enjoying the sun and the festive atmosphere.





I was especially happy to have bought a few of the farm's butternut squashes, whose rich color and aromatic flavor boasted a much better quality than the dry and unripe specimens at the grocery store.  Now the only question left was what I should make out of them... stay tuned for even more pumpkin coming up soon!