When Brewster farmer Ron Backer first read about honeynut squash, he knew he wanted to grow it.
“It is four times sweeter than a butternut; they’re about a third the size and it was grown and developed by a combination to my knowledge of Cornell School of Agriculture, Dan Barber from Blue Hill Farm in the Hudson Valley and a couple of geneticists in Wisconsin,” he said.
In fact, Barber and the plant breeders worked hand in hand to develop the honeynut over a series of squash generations. Barber met plant breeder Michael Mazourek when he came in for a meal at Blue Hill’s restaurant, and challenged him to make a better tasting butternut. Mazourek started with a cross between a butternut and a buttercup, and together they cooked, tasted, and compared generation after generation, until finally they got the honeynut. Ron says there are all kinds of thing to love about it
“It is easily sized for two people, it has a small amount of seeds, you can eat the skin, and it has very high levels of beta carotene.”
And despite the fact that honeynut was bred for flavor instead of the usual yield, it’s still incredibly productive.
“We had a couple of hundred on the first two harvests from 4-6 plants,” he said. “That’s an immense amount, and I was just overwhelmed with its success, particularly here on Cape Cod and particularly in a drought, and it appears to be very resistant to pests.”
Ron isn’t the only grower excited. Honeynut seeds first became widely available in 2015, and by 2017, the breeders estimated it was being grown at 90 percent of large squash farms in the northeast. Since then, word of mouth has gotten the attention of smaller growers like Ron and happy eaters.
“We had friends over for dinner who are not of a fresh fruit and vegetable persuasion and he scooped two halves of a honeynut and just kept eating it and we did nothing to it was just that sweet period.”
I asked if he made anything else with the honeynut, besides roasting.
“No,” he said. “I just want to have that consistency and I love the color of it. And um, I don’t know! But we have a few hundred in my wheelbarrow outside my shed and I know we’re going to be using it for a while! The — not a negative — but unlike butternut which can last for 8-10 months this is reputed to last 2-3 months so we’re going to be having it a lot and I know we’ll have it for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the holidays.”
I made a honeynut squash soup the other night with garlic and cream and sage and chicken stock, and the squash was incredibly good — sweet and dense, like a butternut shrunk down and intensified. It …….
Source: https://www.capeandislands.org/in-this-place/2022-09-22/a-tiny-squash-thats-packed-with-flavor