The Blaine County Journal News-Opinion - We've Got The County Covered

Reporters note: I'm on my annual October temporary job at a pumpkin patch in western Washington State. It's the fourth year I've worked at the Black Crow Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze-about 50 miles north of downtown Seattle, near Arlington, WA. It's a family owned plot of five acres of pumpkins, squash and gourds plus another five acre corn maze. The owner comes from a long line of berry and pumpkin farmers.

I've learned this year, from various media outlets, that "pumpkins are out and gourds are in." I've sold a lot of gourds, along with pumpkins and squash, during my four years at the pumpkin patch. About the only things I really knew about gourds is that they come in many shapes, sizes and colors, are nonedible and folks like them for fall decorations.

Now the lowly gourd is a fashion statement-precisely because of their various sizes, shapes and, in many cases, dazzling fall colors. As I got into the topic I learned there's a great deal of history to gourds and likely they were one of the first plants domesticated by humans. Gourds as decorations came many centuries after the ancients used them for utilitarian purposes-everything from pots and water dippers to birdhouses and water wings. One writer described gourds as "the vegetable that would not be forgotten."

A short history of gourds

First, what is a gourd? Generally, any 'hard shelled' vegetable is a gourd. 'Gourd' is used to describe crop plants in the family Cucurbitaceae-and that includes pumpkins, cucumbers, squash, luffa (those ones used to make back scrubbers for the bath) and melons. Adam Pyle, a horticulturalist at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C, wrote, "These distinctions don't really mean much in a botanical sense. Colloquially, gourd usually refers to inedible varieties, squash to edible ones, and pumpkin is just what we've decided to call some rounded squash." For most readers a gourd is the hard, inedible variety of the whole family of hard shelled vegetables.

There is still some academic disagreement about the origin of gourds. The bottle gourd had its origins in Africa. In parts of Asia other people were also domesticating gourds. Researchers are fairly certain gourds first appeared in the New World (the Americas) in Peru about 13,000 to 11,000 BC. Those archaeological finds are from a slightly different variety of gourds but still have many DNA characteristics in common.

Nearly every early culture used gourds. There is a long history of how man has used gourds for utilitarian purposes-from dippers and vessels made and used by the ancients to birdhouses still preferred by many moderns to control insects around the house or farm. But gourds were also used to make musical instruments (everything from rattles to stringed instruments and nose flutes-the latter in the Pacific area). The Chinese developed a technique to tie a 'mold' around the growing gourds that resulted in square shaped gourds that could be dried and used as storage boxes and portable carriers.

In Montana gourds are not a common thing. There is a Montana Gourd Artists Guild according to a website that came up on a search of the internet. Cathy Toot, from Ennis, MT, seems to be the driving force behind the group. Toot is an artist who owns the Muddled Moose Studio in Ennis. From the posts on the Guild's website there are not many members. It appears the market for gourd art in Montana is wide open as there are very few members in the guild and most of them were posting question about where to find gourds.

Gourds as decorations

Using gourds for table centerpieces and other fall decorations has been around for a long time. What is new is the variety of gourds now available. A farmer in Virginia, who raises decorative gourds, plants 50+ varieties to give his customers lots of choices. Roadside vegetable stands abound with choices of shape, color and size. This is a far cry from the few varieties that were common 50 years ago at the grocery store or the occasional roadside stand.

Now the gloves are off for ways gourds can be used in decorating. Sugar Taylor, a professional interior decorator in Washington, DC, was recently interviewed on a radio program about fall decorations. She cited the gourd as the new 'in thing' for the elegant and expensive centerpieces she creates for fall dinner parties hosted by wealthy hostesses in the nation's capitol.

Why this sudden interest in gourds as decorations? Pyle, with the U.S. Botanical Garden, put it this way: "Every grower wants to have the new, really cool gourd that everyone wants to buy, that Martha Stewart posts on her blog. You have a huge demand for squash and gourds that are aesthetically interesting and different from each other. That's been popular for a while, and it's been really trendy the last few years." And the trend doesn't seem to be dwindling at all. Gourd farmers are constantly developing new, extraordinary gourds never seen or imagined before.

A gourd farmer's take

Gary Biringer owns the Black Crow Pumpkin Patch outside Arlington, WA. In his late 40's, Biringer has been raising gourds (pumpkins, squash, etc.) since he was a teenager. His parents had a berry farm outside Everett, WA and as a way to create a fall market for farm products, he got them interested in raising pumpkins. Young Biringer still keeps the gourd business going, now at his own gourd farm.

Biringer said, "There's no shortage of different varieties of gourds that are available from commercial seed companies. In fact, gourds are nearly impossible to eradicate once you plant them. Every year, in our pumpkin patch, we have volunteers. Even the weed spray we put around the pumpkins won't kill the volunteer gourds." He said gourds survive so well in western Washington because winters are mild and the hard shell survives the winters. He breaks up the surviving gourds when he plows and disks the fields to plant pumpkins in the spring.

He added, "Because the gourds are planted amongst the pumpkins and squash there are a lot of new varieties of gourds that we see each year. The bees cross pollinate amongst the gourds, pumpkins and squash. In some of the volunteer gourds you can see characteristics of pumpkins and squash that were planted around them. The result is a lot of very unusual looking gourds."

For pumpkins a consistent product is desirable. For that reason Biringer plants hybrid pumpkin seeds each year-to produce large, small, flat, or tall pumpkins and those with the classic jack-o-lantern shape. But the volunteer gourds take on characteristics from the surrounding vegetables resulting in a new croup of unusual sizes, shapes, colors and textures. Biringer said, "There are always surprises on how the volunteer gourds will look. And customers love to comb the vines to find that one unique gourd that no one else will have-or, likely, will ever be available again."

So, the annual trip to the pumpkin/gourd/squash patch is always full of surprises. Youngsters like the "kid size" pumpkins (gourds) that look like miniature jack-o-lanterns. Adults are after those special colors, shapes or sizes that will make a unique table or front door display. It's a win-win for everyone as the customers snag and bag their one-of-a-kind decorative treasures. Despite being a part of man's history for many centuries, the gourd truly is the vegetable that would not be forgotten.