- "Washington Grown" is made possible by funding from the Washington State Department of Agriculture and the USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant Program, and by the Potato Farmers of Washington.

Learn why Washington is home to the world's most productive potato fields and farmers by visiting potatoes.com.

- Hi, everyone, I'm Kristi Gorenson, and welcome to "Washington Grown."

When fall comes around, so do the jack-o'-lanterns, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin patches.

In this episode, we're gonna learn how Washington farmers are producing perfect pumpkins for carving, cooking, and decoration.

Val's painting pumpkins at Bay Baby Produce.

- So everything's pumpkin, pumpkin joy, pumpkin painting.

- And I'm making breakfast hash with Washington squash at Geraldine's Counter in Seattle.

Yeah, it's splattering.

Stand back.

[laughing] - Yes.

- Woo!

We're gonna go like this.

- Do you wanna do it?

There you go.

- Woo!

Then, Val's visiting some giant pumpkins.

- Yeah, the cover is just to protect the pumpkin.

[Val screaming] [farmer chuckling] - All this and more today on "Washington Grown."

[bright music] It's a flavor-cation for your mouth.

- Flavor-cation.

- And I'm just gonna hold on.

[pilot chuckling] - You got a long ways to go.

Let's go.

No, just kidding.

- Okay, sorry.

I know.

Get with it.

- You were not kidding about a party of flavors.

Wait a minute, where are my pears?

- Eat two, pick one.

- Exactly.

[chuckling] - I'm gonna stick around a while.

[laughing] - We're changing hearts tonight.

- Yes, we are.

- Wow, I got work to do.

- Yeah, you do.

- All right, let's go.

[comforting music] - On a gloomy day like this here in Seattle, it's important to find the right place to get out of the rain.

I'm in luck because today, I'm visiting Geraldine's Counter.

[jivy music] [singer vocalizes] This Columbia City hotspot is the perfect place to warm up with a hot cup of coffee and a delicious breakfast.

- I like that when you come in here, there's a, like as he says, a lot of color.

- Co-owners, Stacey Hettinger and Sherwin Tolentino want their guests to feel as comfortable here as they do at home.

That means fresh food is coming at you hot and ready.

- You can order lunch at 8:00 AM or you can order breakfast at 2:00 PM.

- Geraldine's is really special.

- It's a space for friendship.

It's a space for good food.

- It's like family.

It's kinda like my "Cheers," you know what I mean?

[chuckles] - We want people to wake up with us, and we wanna be always appreciative of people who walk through the door.

I mean, we are very blessed by our clientele.

We have amazing, beautiful people that have been coming in for 19 years and, you know, they become part of your family.

- I've been coming here for 17 years.

It's the only place I eat my breakfast outside of my home.

- All homemade, fresh, and the service is amazing.

- Stick around because later in the show, Chef Laureano and I are making Geraldine's famous breakfast hash with Washington squash.

Your famous hash with a poached egg and a biscuit.

- And a biscuit.

Our famous biscuit too.

- [chuckles] I love it.

- So we make a lot of biscuits too, every day.

- You're killing me.

[tranquil music] [easygoing music] - Up here in the Skagit Valley, orange, white, and multicolored pumpkins are ripe and ready for harvest.

Here at Bay Baby Produce, teams are just starting to pick pumpkins and squash, so people all over can celebrate the upcoming fall season.

- We grow organic hard squash, about 10 different varieties, along with about 20 different varieties of pumpkins.

- Nate Youngquist is vice president and farm manager of Bay Baby Produce.

His job right now is to make sure harvest goes smoothly.

- What I have in my hand right now is called a tiger, and we also have sparkler.

- Oh my gosh.

Look at the teeny, tiny, little spots on it.

- These are ornamental pumpkins.

- Okay.

- That get put on your table for Halloween or even for Thanksgiving.

- We started out growing like 30 acres.

And now, we're up to about 750 acres.

- Michele Youngquist is president of Bay Baby Produce here in Mount Vernon.

Between her and her son, they manage to keep things running smoothly as a team.

- Her and I are pretty similar, so we definitely can bounce ideas off each other, and I think that's kinda what makes us a good team.

She sells and I grow, and we combine to make all the right decisions, hopefully.

- We see the product all the way through from beginning to end.

- Right, you think you would mind showing me how to pick one of these?

- Yeah, definitely.

- All right, what am I looking for?

- Well, you're just looking for one that's fully orange.

You're just gonna kinda find the one you're looking for and- - Ooh, how about that one?

- Yeah, yeah, just- - Okay, and I don't wanna touch the stem.

- Nope, just grab the whole thing right off, and it'll peel right off.

- Okay.

Oh, I didn't even have to do anything with my wrist!

- Fully mature, they just come right off usually.

- Wow, that's great.

Thanks!

[chuckling] - No problem, it's all yours.

- Aside from just selling their pumpkins, they also have a few special products.

Their Pumpkin Patch Pals give smiles to children all over, and their painting kits are also a fun way for kids of all ages to have fun together.

Do you think it'd be possible for me to do some painting of your pumpkins?

- Absolutely.

I know where you can get some.

- Oh, you do?

[both laughing] So we set up some paint and brought in a special guest.

Oh, who do we have here?

- We've got Lena Jo.

- Lena Jo.

- This is my granddaughter.

- All right, girl power.

And what type of pumpkins are these?

- Those are called wee-be-littles.

- Wee-be-littles, all right, well, we be painting.

[Val laughing] - We be painting.

I like that.

- Here you go, dear one.

- Yeah.

- You ready?

All right, can you get started?

- Oh yeah, she knows what she's doing.

- What color is that?

- Red.

- Very good.

- We were already painting pumpkins, so we decided, well, this is a fun thing for children to do and it's great for moms to bring into the classroom.

And it's small enough that they can take the pumpkins home in their backpack.

You can do so many different types of decorations.

We kinda keep what's trending on Pinterest and so forth, so, you know, we're kinda following the pulse of the pumpkin pulse, I guess.

- Right.

[chuckles] - And for fall decoration.

- So is this like a whole thing that I've been missing out on, the pumpkin pulse?

- The pumpkin pulse, yes.

Everything's pumpkin, pumpkin joy, pumpkin pulse, pumpkin painting.

- Wanna say one, two, three, cheese?

Okay, one, two, three, cheese.

- Cheese.

- That's so good!

- Good job.

[comfortable music] - What do you get when you take Russian piroshkis and Filipino empanadas and combine them with fresh Washington ingredients?

The answer is a perfectly delicious mixture of flavor and culture.

Welcome to Pinoyshki on Capitol Hill where owner Aly Anderson is taking her Filipino roots and the inspiration of those around her to make something incredible.

- The piroshkis themselves, they reminded me of Filipino empanadas.

So we worked together to come up with a recipe that would mesh well together.

Now, we have pinoyshki.

It's like Filipino, pinoy, and then piroshki.

- So taking your Filipino roots, taking a traditional Russian dish, and then using Washington state ingredients to create something pretty magical?

- Yes, right.

Our restaurant tells a story about how seemingly different we are, but actually like, we're all very, very similar.

Like the food that we share, like even like the piroshkis.

Like dough with meat, dough with filling, that's in every single culture.

- Everywhere.

You can get it anywhere.

- Has their own version of that.

- And today, we have a special dish made with Washington pumpkin filling that's a little hard to pronounce.

- This is ginataang kalabasa.

So in the Philippines, for us, pumpkin is more of a savory vegetable.

- Okay.

- Yeah, it's gonna be like sweet and salty.

It has some bacon in it just to give it a little more oomph.

[Tomás chuckles] - This dough is so soft.

- Uh-hmm.

- And there's a sweetness to the dough.

That filling is surprisingly savory.

And then, I get in there and it's just got this earthy, almost beefy kinda texture, even though it's pumpkin.

- Yeah.

- This is good.

- Thank you.

- Okay, if all your dishes are like this, I'm in trouble.

[chuckles] - We have like 20 more flavors to go through.

- [laughs] Great!

Time to see what others think about this pumpkin pinoyshki.

- Do you like pumpkin?

- Yes.

- Do you like bacon?

- Yes.

- Do you like garlic?

- Yes.

- Do you like bread?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Middle or the end, which do you think is better?

- Whatever, whichever you, I actually- - I'm more of like a kind of a middle person.

- The middle person?

Okay, so you get the middle brownie out of the- - Oh, absolutely.

I don't want the corner.

- You don't want the corner.

[chuckles] - No.

[comfortable music continues] - Hmm.

- That is amazing.

- That's delicious.

- I can eat this for breakfast or lunch.

- The garlic is really good.

- Texture is wonderful.

- I don't even know if I would've known on first bite that it was pumpkin.

- Right.

- The sweet versus savory, it's very savory.

- Dough is perfection.

- Very cozy.

Living up to its name.

- It's very good.

- [laughs] Yeah, and I'm glad you like it.

Look, she's going in for another bite.

I like that.

[at-ease music] - Jack-o'-lanterns weren't always pumpkins.

What were they originally?

We'll let you know after the break.

- Coming up, I'm making breakfast hash with Washington squash at Geraldine's in Seattle.

I'm amazed how you can do that without flinging it across the room.

- You wanna do it?

- No.

[Chef Laureano laughing] And we're in The Kitchen at Second Harvest, trying Chef Laurent's mom's pumpkin tart recipe.

[upbeat music] - The original jack-o'-lanterns were made out of potatoes and turnips.

[pleasant music] - We're back at Geraldine's Counter in Columbia City.

Friendly staff, great atmosphere, and amazing food have people arguing over which dish is the best.

- Salads are wonderful.

- Lemon ricotta pancakes was pretty awesome.

- The best French toast you've ever had in your life.

- What are some of your favorite things here?

- Yes.

[laughing] Yes, that's the answer.

- Nothing fails.

- We get all of our vegetables from Pike Place Market.

Our meats come from small local purveyors, and we really try to source as much sustainable and local as possible.

- Co-owners, Stacey and Sherwin, make sure that every item on their menu is made with fresh, locally sourced ingredients.

- We just have things that we do a little bit different.

We get our bacon in by the house, and we slice it in-house.

Nothing comes in and we just put it on the table.

Except for our condiments, everything's made in-house.

- But today, one person is missing from the picture, Gary Schneider.

As one of the founders of Geraldine's and Sherwin's partner, the joy and love he infused into the restaurant is still around even after his passing.

- I don't know where the term came from, but he was dubbed the unofficial mayor of Columbia City.

People will and- - 'Cause he would leave the floor- - Yeah, when it's busy.

- And he would go and say hi to people.

[chuckles] - He spread that across the neighborhood and- - He was a great hugger.

- Yeah, and people miss that.

- Yeah.

- People still miss that.

- Today, Gary's memory lives on in the restaurant and customers still feel the love.

- Geraldine's is a lot like walking out into your kitchen and having your mom got some stuff going on the stove and you sit down, drop your shoulders, take a big breath, and enjoy.

That's what Geraldine's is, home.

- Time to cook with Head Chef Margarito Laureano.

[homey music] So I've never had hash with butternut squash in it before.

- Well, it's your first time.

You're gonna try.

[both laughing] - I love it.

So it ends up like this.

- Yes, and then I can show you how we cut it.

See the half right here?

- Uh-huh.

- So I wanna cut it right here because, and then when we cut it, here's the seeds.

Easy, everybody think like it's kinda hard to cut it, but it's not.

It's kinda easy.

- Easy.

- Well, for me.

[chuckles] - [chuckles] For you.

- But basically, everybody can do that.

- Reminds me of Halloween.

[chuckling] - Yeah, so the corned beef, this corned beef we cooked for four hours.

- Wow, and this is local?

- It's local, yes.

We come from the market, from the marketplace.

- Yeah, marketplace meats.

That's awesome.

- Yes.

- So you get big chunks.

I love that.

- So actually, I leave a little bit of the fat, so when they cook, you know, with all the veggies and other things, so they got those flavors first.

- We cook the corned beef on a skillet with some olive oil, but watch out.

Be careful, okay?

- Yeah, it's splattering.

Step back.

- Yes.

- Woo!

- [chuckling] So there you go.

- That's gonna... - We're gonna go like this.

- Just put the potatoes in, wanna do it?

You wanna do it?

There we go.

- Woo!

We add onions, red and green peppers, celery, and some salt and pepper.

I'm amazed how you can do that without flinging it across the room.

- You wanna do it?

[chuckles] - No.

- No.

[laughing] - Butternut squash, the star.

- The star, I like how the squash adds that real pretty orange color to the dish too.

- Yeah, then look- - Got the rainbow.

So we're gonna have your famous hash.

- Poached eggs.

- With a poached egg and a biscuit.

- Uh-hmm and a biscuit.

Our famous biscuit too.

- [chuckles] I love it.

- So we make a lot of biscuit too every day.

- You're killing me.

We poach an egg, then the dish is ready to eat.

[homey music continues] - One for you.

- Thank you.

- And one for me, of course.

- Yes, of course.

You're the most important one.

- Well?

Hmm.

- That's gorgeous.

[chuckles] I love it.

The butternut squash is kinda creamy, tiny bit sweet.

- The meat is still like a little salty.

- And then, the meat is like salty, and this is the fun part, right?

- Yes, see?

- Yeah, look at that.

- You can pull it out together with that.

- This is a hearty meal right here.

Thank you so much.

- Yeah.

- I'm warm and happy.

- And we have a lot more stuff, okay?

This is only one thing.

This is only one thing, but we have a lot.

- Try everything at Geraldine's.

[chuckles] To get the recipe for Geraldine's famous hash with Washington butternut squash, visit us at wagrown.com.

[mild music] Farmers are inherently tied to nature.

The environment impacts every single thing they do.

Take cranberry farmers in Southwest Washington.

They're dealing with the wet and rainy climate of that area.

- It makes it a little bit more difficult when it's raining for a week straight.

We can always add water to the farms.

We can't take it away.

- Their solution is to dig ditches to help drain the water.

- When you cover the ditches, what it does is it helps keep any of the chemicals or any of the fertilizers, anything that we put on getting in into water source, right?

And contaminating things.

- The water that comes off of our bogs ends up out in Willapa Bay, which is a major oyster growing area and lots of fish.

I hear that it's the cleanest estuary in the US right now.

We need to keep it that way.

- Although farmers in that area may have too much water, other farmers are worried about conserving water.

For Luke Hamada, that solution is drip irrigation.

- When we water it, it goes directly into the soil.

So we save a lot on the evaporation and things.

Keeping as much water in the rivers is really important for all the other parts of the ecosystem.

So the more that we can conserve and not lose just to evaporation in the air, I think, we're trying to do our part.

- But farmers have to stay innovative because not every solution is perfect for every field.

- Just about everywhere you go, the majority of peppers are grown with drip irrigation.

And we used to do it that way when we first started, and we found that in this sandy soil, it actually increased water usage for us because- - Oh, no.

- In the sandy soil, the water was just going straight down.

- Yeah.

- And it was hard to get it to go out to where the plant roots were.

- And farmers are working hard to come up with better and better solutions to keep their farms environmentally friendly.

Travis Meacham is trying out a newer system to grow this field of tomatoes.

- This is a Dragon line system.

So what we're doing is pulling a hose along and only watering right in the planted row right now.

- Oh, okay.

- On one hand, it's very simple.

All it is, which is we connect a hose to our circle and we drag it and water comes out the end.

- Yeah.

- But on our hose, we have small emitters that come out, and so we're putting out a very precise amount of water.

- Yeah.

- And so each one of those aren't just a hole poked in there.

- Yeah.

- They are the exact size it puts out, and so if we need to put out water, we put out a longer hose.

And that way, we get more water down per plant.

We definitely think we're seeing water savings.

And I mean, just standing here looking at it, you're not seeing any water being thrown in the air.

We're getting all the water right down where we need it.

- Simple.

- Yes, it's a very simple concept, but it seems to work very well.

So right now, we are only watering this planted row.

But as these plants grow out, we're gonna drop more hoses down and continue to water the root zone.

- Whether it's water savings, water runoff, or land management, our Washington farmers are working to better the environment.

So next time you see the sunset behind a field, remember the farmers who are working hard to keep our state healthy, clean, and beautiful.

Coming up, Val's visiting some giant pumpkins.

- Yeah, the cover is just to protect the pumpkin.

[Val screams] [Joel chuckles] [upbeat music] - From Bay Baby's tiny pumpkins to something a little bigger, I'm visiting Joel Holland's pumpkin patch to see what's growing under these tarps.

- Oh, my goodness, Joel, what do we have here?

- Well, this is one of our giant pumpkins.

It's actually the largest one we have right now in mid-August.

- Yeah, the cover is just to protect the pumpkin.

- Oh, wow.

[screams] - Look at this.

- This one's probably a little over halfway through the season now.

- Shut the front door.

So when it's done, then that means it'll be like this big?

- It won't be quite that tall, but it'll be a lot wider and a lot longer, and maybe a little bit taller.

We have a plant that covers about a thousand square feet here, and it has hundreds of leaves, all performing photosynthesis.

You know what they produce actually goes into just this one pumpkin.

So at the peak of its growth, it was actually gaining 40 pounds each day.

- Sounds like me.

[both laughing] You know, walking around.

- When you have too much dessert, huh?

- Right, exactly.

So do you name your pumpkins?

- I really don't.

You know, some people do, and that's kind of fun.

But I've grown so many now, I'd run out of names.

- [laughing] Oh, you can't run out of names.

- I've been growing pumpkins for 50 years.

- Well, that's Little Val over there.

- Okay.

- A Little Val.

- We just named it.

Little Val, it is.

This is actually the most recent pumpkin that we've had a world record with or world championship.

- Uh-huh.

- And it actually is our largest pumpkin we've ever grown.

- Okay.

- It was 2,363 pounds.

- But what happens to these world-record pumpkins after they've been weighed?

- A lot of 'em go out to the Krainick Dairy in Enumclaw.

I think some of 'em actually get fed to their dairy herd.

- Oh, I love that.

- Yeah, cows just love the giant pumpkins when they're cut into pieces.

- It's not really a nutritious thing for them.

It's more of a treat that we give to them.

- Oh, okay.

- They have to steam shovel a pumpkin, but they can make a pretty decent impact for about a half hour.

- Okay, and I bet you practice makes perfect, right?

- Absolutely.

- Leann Krainick runs Krainick Dairy.

Aside from amazing milk products, these cows are making something else that helps gardeners like Joel.

- The interesting thing with Joel is that we've been partnering with him for about 10 years.

He called me one day and he said, "Leann, do you have any compost for my patch?"

And I said, "Sure, Joel."

And he actually broke the state record that still holds.

- Yeah, yes.

- And it's partially because of compost from these ladies.

- These cows.

- It's inside the in-vessel composter for three days, rotating in about 160 degrees.

And what comes out is dry and sterile, high in organic matter, which earthworms love and has a wonderful, very great pH for vegetables.

- Wow.

- Which really helps Joel and his fellow vegetable growers do some amazing things with produce.

The fact that we can turn it into something that gardeners can use to grow produce, - Yeah.

- For us, or that we can use as bedding, that's a win-win.

So this is what has become of Joel's pumpkin?

- That's right, Val.

The cows got to eat their fair shake, and then the rest is just gonna go for compost.

- All right.

- That we'll put on our fields.

- May the great pumpkin rest in peace.

[Leann and Val laughing] What else do you say?

[bright music] - We are in The Kitchen at Second Harvest Food Bank in Spokane, and the gang is all here for our tasting today.

We have Val and Tomás and Chef Laurent Zirotti.

Thank you.

- Good morning, everyone.

- I know this is wonderful that we're all together, and we get to eat some good food.

It was fun to see you hanging out with all those pumpkins.

- It was fun hanging with the pumpkins.

- I love that.

- Big ones and little ones.

- Big ones, little ones, in between.

Hanging, hugging, and painting.

- Hanging, hugging, and painting.

I love it.

- How big are we talking about?

I heard big.

- Big.

- Big.

- Hundreds of pounds?

- Massive.

- Massive, maybe like the size, - Like the size of the table.

- Oh my God.

- Yeah.

- No joke, it's all this guy does.

- It's something you cannot carry?

- No, no, sir.

Without a truck and a tractor.

- You can sit on top of it.

- Yeah.

- A lot of fun, and we're gonna make something very special.

- Something very special but very unusual.

I grew up with not a pumpkin pie, the way I grew up with pumpkin was a soup.

Soup, or that tart.

My mom make that dish with pumpkin that is a tart.

A tart is a pie, but it's not your regular Thanksgiving pie.

It's completely different.

It doesn't have any cinnamon in it.

It's something unusual, but I love it.

I love it because it, you know, food brings you memory and especially that it's close to my heart.

She passed away last year, so it's almost an homage for me to present that recipe.

It's something that I cherish, and I hope you will too.

- Yeah, so Laurent's mother's pumpkin tart.

- Yes.

- Let's see how we make it.

- All right.

[happy-go-lucky music] - So it's definitely not your traditional, like you said.

- Exactly.

- It's not like a traditional pumpkin pie.

- And you saw it on the recipe, very shredded, very finely.

It's not super sweet either, so if you wanna make it feel good, you say, "Ah, it's low in sugar.

"I eat pumpkin, I eat vegetable.

I can have that dessert."

- It's healthy.

Cheers to your mom.

- Yes, I know.

I hope I won't cry when I eat that.

- Wow, that pumpkin really comes out in a way that I almost feel like even more than a traditional pumpkin pie.

- Absolutely, well, because it's not buried in all the sugar.

- I think it's really origin from my Swiss side of the family, her Swiss side of the family.

And every time I do it with French people, they are, oh, surprised because it's not either traditional from France either.

And it could be a, if you want another argument around the table for Thanksgiving, you do that tart and you're gonna have another argument.

[everyone chuckling] - Have another.

- And what was your mom's name?

- Renee.

- Renee?

- Renee, yeah.

- Okay, well, Renee has a unique twist on pumpkin tarts.

- Cheers.

- Cheers to her, yeah.

- Thank you.

- To get the recipe for Chef Laurent Zirotti's pumpkin tart, visit us at wagrown.com.

From small ones like this little guy to giant prize winners, Washington never fails to grow the best pumpkins and squash out there.

That's it for this episode of "Washington Grown."

We'll see you next time.