{"id":7889,"date":"2019-12-17T16:33:11","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T21:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=7889"},"modified":"2019-12-17T16:33:11","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T21:33:11","slug":"we-tried-our-first-therons-winter-squash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2019\/12\/17\/we-tried-our-first-therons-winter-squash\/","title":{"rendered":"We tried our first Theron’s Winter squash"},"content":{"rendered":"

And boy, was it a treat! First off, this squash is huge<\/em>. Ours weighed 40 pounds. And the orange meat is so thick I had to have Will cut it open with Mom’s old butcher knife. And even he had a time of it. (I usually just chop such a squash with my trusty hatchet but figured that is a little brutal\u2026) My gardening friend, Dara, called and said she was cooking the one I’d given her so I figured I’d give it a go too. She texted me back sometime later and said hers was only average tasting so I was disappointed. But I baked a chunk anyway, just to see. There’s often some variation between squash even off the same vine, and Dara is quite picky about her squash. We had ours for supper and we all agreed it was very good. I even ate the skin without realizing it! We graded it as a “B” as it isn’t as good as our old favorite, Hopi Pale Grey, but it sure was good in our opinion. And because there is so<\/em> much of it, you could can up tons and tons from only a few squash. It has also been used as a livestock feed as it is very productive and pretty early too, only 100 days. It’s a definite regular around here! I originally bought the seeds from Adaptive Seeds because of its name, Theron’s \u2014 Theron was my grandfather’s name so I figured it was a sign.<\/p>\n

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Will had a hard time cutting one open because the meat was so thick.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Will carrying in the 40 pound squash during harvest time. We love the “big belly button” on the bottom of Theron’s Winter squash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The loggers are busy across the creek. They start at about 5:20 AM \u2014 way before daylight \u2014 and work steadily all day with two skidders going back and forth with bundles of logs. They’re doing a nice job too. They left a nice border between us and the beaver pond and creek so you don’t see the “ugly” cut-over woods. The deer sure love it as they can now easily munch on poplar twigs. I’ll be glad to get that check so we can pay down on our land loan. I hate <\/em>debt!<\/p>\n

With Christmas approaching, David brought in our Christmas tree. It had been in the back of our pickup and was covered in snow. But, luckily, he was able to tunk the trunk down on the ground a few times and nearly all of the snow and ice fell off. He got it into the living room and set it up in the stand. Now it’s thawed out so tonight we’ll be decorating.<\/p>\n

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David, straightening up the Christmas tree.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My son, Bill, let us know last night that their pump for the mound system had quit. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a septic drainfield, mounded up above ground to supposedly provide better drainage than a regular septic tank drainfield in low or clay soil. We’re not fans because, as Bill found out, the pumps fail. And they’re down underground several feet, and when they fail, it’s usually winter. He did manage to get the pump cut loose from the PVC pipe and tried it \u2014 no good. It’s supposed to get way below zero for a day and night so he’ll have a devil of a time replacing it. The mound system is required in many areas, but we feel it would be better if the area was, instead, dug out several feet and a thick bed of gravel and sand put in to lay normal drain tile on so the system could drain via gravity. But then, no one “asked Jackie!” — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And boy, was it a treat! First off, this squash is huge. Ours weighed 40 pounds. And the orange meat is so thick I had to have Will cut it open with Mom’s old butcher knife. And even he had a time of it. (I usually just chop such a squash with my trusty hatchet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,13,17,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7889"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7894,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7889\/revisions\/7894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}