Candy Roaster Squash

A few years ago—I think while DD#2 was still in high school—one of the teachers at our local elementary school had a vision for a school garden. In addition to being a teacher, Debbie was also my kids’ school bus driver and attended our church. Her husband is a farmer and Debbie (who is now retired from teaching) has a thriving flower arranging business. She recognized that kids were becoming less and less familiar with where their food came from and wanted to reverse the trend. The school gave her permission to put in a small garden plot on school property, but her vision was bigger than just a seasonal garden. She wanted a greenhouse. The school administration told her that was an impossible dream. Undeterred, Debbie put the word out and within less than a year, had the donations in place to build a very impressive glass-sided greenhouse in front of the school.

Each May, the schoolkids hold a plant sale in the greenhouse. This year, Elysian bought some squash seedlings at the sale. One of the varieties was called North Georgia Candy Roaster. I’d never seen nor heard of this variety but she’s been talking about it all summer. Yesterday afternoon, she and her little guy walked over to our property with a gift for us:

I told her little guy that we needed to see how much it weighed, so I got out the postal scale:

Almost nine pounds!

She said it cooked up nicely in the pressure cooker, so I’ll make something with it in the Instant Pot. No doubt it will feed us for several meals!

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I hung my new windchime on the porch:

I love these quirky designs. I saw this butter dish chime and knew it should come home with me.

I only have room for a couple more chimes on the back porch. The husband said I could start hanging some in the rafters on the side of the new shop, but they would be pretty high up. I do love the sound these make in the breeze, though.

It appears that this may be a winter for the record books. Another snowstorm is forecast to hit north central Montana tomorrow. We’re on the western edge of the advisories, so I am not sure how or if we’ll be affected, but it looks like we’ll at least have some wind and cold temperatures. We’ve got a concrete blanket out in the garden for covering up the lettuce.

I so enjoyed driving over and back to Spokane this past weekend and seeing Montana dressed up in her fall finery. The sunlight is a bit more muted now and casts a soft glow over everything. This time of year is bittersweet because I know it won’t last—the frosting of snow on top of the mountains is proof of that—although winter in Montana has a beauty all its own.