Dale Sherman is up to his elbows in squash.
It’s a common position he finds himself in. In fact, he’s rarely known another in a lifetime of farming on Ebey’s Prairie.
Standing inside a spacious barn, Sherman is surrounded by stalls filled with Sugar Hubbard squash carefully stacked and packed in wheat hay.
On this January day, the third-generation Coupeville farmer figures about 130 tons are still in the barn, but there’s no cause for alarm.
His father designed this barn and the other beside it in the 1990s with sharp attention to detail specifically to store the family farm’s signature crop.
The barns are unique in that their tight seals and other insulated qualities keep out the freeze during the winter while vast overhead space allows a fan to keep things cool when necessary during the warmer months.
Before the barns were built, when squash was kept in ordinary barns, the Shermans were in a pickle this time of year.
“By the time February came around, if you hadn’t moved product out, you were done,” Sherman said. “They either froze or got too warm or something and you were done. That isn’t the case in these buildings.”
Dale and Liz Sherman’s squash operation at Sherman’s Pioneer Farm has blossomed during the best of times and survived some rough patches.
Dale Sherman, 68, grew up on the 100-acre farm and except for a brief stint in the Army has spent his entire life on the land.
His family is the last of the Whidbey Island commercial squash farmers, constantly evolving in how they package and market their product.
Although the public knows the Shermans for their pumpkin patches and trolley rides come October, the family’s unique sweet variety of Hubbard squash is what has set the farm apart for decades and continues to be sold at Whole Foods Market stores and other grocery outlets in Washington and Oregon.
Sugar Hubbard squash, a cross between Blue Hubbard and Sweetmeat squash, is the farm’s staple crop with about 200 tons produced each year, which amounts to thousands of tear-drop shaped gourds that average about 30 pounds apiece.
By comparison, that’s roughly double the tonnage of pumpkins they produce.
The Sherman Pioneer farm is distinct in that it grows the only commercial crop of Sugar Hubbard squash in the state.
The variety came about after Edwin Sherman, Dale’s father, and other farmers on Ebey’s Prairie worked with the Washington State University extension in Mount Vernon in 1940s and came up with a sweeter squash that stored longer.
“They were looking for a product that was a little easier to cut,” Dale Sherman said, “and maybe would store a little bit more. And the local farmers, which at that time, would have been the Reubles, the Smiths, the Boyers, the Shermans and the Engles, they all decided they needed something different.”
While other squash farmers eventually stopped, the Shermans kept going, aided by their specially made barns that could store them longer.
“That was our thing. Our thing was squash,” Dale Sherman said. “Everybody else had a dairy or they had something else. Our main income was squash.”
Sugar Hubbard squash is a year-round operation for Sherman, whose daughter, DeeAnna Smith, and wife help carry on the family tradition.
The crop is usually hand planted in early May and takes roughly 120 days until it’s ready for harvest.
Accustomed to selling whole squash for decades to Safeway, the business was hit hard when that relationship ended in the late 1990s as Sherman can only guess his prices could no longer compete with a Hubbard variety produced in Mexico.
However, the business bounced back and reinvented itself and now sells whole squash to Charlie’s Produce and cut, cubed squash to the Whole Foods Market for distribution in Washington and Oregon.
Payless Foods in Freeland and Prairie Center’s Red Apple Market also carry the Shermans’ squash, among others, and Caio restaurant in Coupeville features the product on its menu.
The cut-squash operation has only been taking place on Sherman’s farm for the past seven years, Dale Sherman said.
He said the business landed a federal grant and is trying to find buyers for a squash puree that can be used in soups, pies and other dishes.
“For cooking, it is really good because it’s sweeter,” Liz Sherman said of their squash variety. “You don’t have to add any sugar if you don’t want to.”
Even the Shermans’ beef cows are fond of the Sugar Hubbard. When Dale tosses the discarded parts of a pumpkin and a Sugar Hubbard squash to the cows, the cows go after the squash.
“Everybody likes the squash better,” Dale Sherman said. “The cows and the people.”
