I’ll admit it: I’m a little squeamish when it comes to bugs. Ladybugs are okay, but anything squirmy, slimy, or creepy-crawly I shudder at. So when Farmer Ric asked me to help out with his squash crop by killing squash bugs, I was more than a little scared – and with good reason.
“You’ve got to just take them and squish them like this,” he demonstrated, taking the ugliest-looking beetle I’ve ever seen with his bare fingers, and mashing it into the dirt. A tiny jet of bug juice sprayed out of the beetle’s backside. “Oh, and be careful,” he added. “They can squirt like that. And their juice is kind of stinky.”
Gross! Gross gross gross, I thought with every bug I squashed in my fingers. Their eggs, little brown seed-looking things I sometimes found on the bottom of the squash leaves, were no better: I mashed them with my thumb and forefinger into a yellowish-brown paste.
I gained a lot of respect and admiration for Farmer Ric and everything he does, pulling those bugs off every single plant individually. Ric called pulling the squash bugs “baptism by fire” into working on the farm – I just called it terrifying! But in the end I was proud that my work not only kept our summer squash crop healthy, but also keeps the winter squash safe from what would have been a gradual invasion.
Farmer Ric is primarily growing his squash for the blossoms, and he calls the actual squash an extra bonus. The blossoms we take off his hands in the restaurant in order to make our amazing summer appetizer, Squash & Blossom, a fried blossom and zucchini duo with basil aioli. Now, whenever I look at our Squash & Blossom, I think about all of the hard (and sometimes gross!) work that went into it. Every plate at Farm & Table is truly a work of art, both as it’s made in the kitchen and as it’s grown on the farm.