Summer Hill: Whanganui couple growing pumpkin seeds on their sheep and beef farm

Grant and Clare Adkins of Summer Hill Seeds in Okoia.

The Country’s Kem Ormond heads to Whanganui to learn more about sheep and beef farmers Clare and Grant Adkins’ pumpkin seed business, Summer Hill Seeds. She also discovered a delicious recipe for pumpkin flour bread.

Fat green, edible pumpkin seeds are naturally sun-ripened and packed with protein, beautiful nutty oil, and nutritious silken flour.

You would never know that these delicious products came from a hard-shelled orange/green pumpkin.

Summer Hill’s pumpkin seeds are grown at Okoia, on the outskirts of Whanganui.

Clare and Grant Adkins have set aside 10 hectares of their sheep and beef farm to grow these amazing pumpkin seeds.

These are not just your ordinary pumpkins, the seeds for these pumpkins are sourced from both Italy and Austria.

They are hard-shelled with a soft almost spaghetti-like texture encasing the seeds.

Diversity on farms is a common practice nowadays, and when farming friends in Marton decided to sell up their pumpkin seed business, complete with all the machinery needed, the Adkins jumped at the opportunity.

Speaking of diversity, the Adkins also spend time coppicing poplar trees for erosion control - I would say they eat a lot of pumpkin seeds to keep up this amount of energy!

They knew producing quality pumpkin seeds was going to be labour-intensive, but this is a couple not afraid of hard work and just as well.

November is when the seed is sown, by late December the vines cover the entire pumpkin paddock and in April the following year, they are harvested.

It takes two months for all the pumpkins to be harvested. Every day, what has been harvested has to be processed.

Harvesting is when “The Beast” comes alive and believe me, this is one mean machine!

“The Beast” is a harvester, attached to the back of a tractor. When I visited the farm, it was being serviced for the upcoming season.

The process of harvesting the pumpkins begins with them being impaled and chopped into small pieces, with the seeds then being sieved out.

"The Beast" being given its annual service before the start of the season.

Then the seeds have to be soaked, washed, and dried (taking up to 14 hours), followed by more sieving.

Finally, they are put on a table that vibrates and grades out the superior seeds from ones that can be processed into pumpkin seed oil and flour.

What is great about this entire process is that nothing is wasted.

Almost every pumpkin seed is used, with the chopped-up pumpkins left in the paddock to be recycled back into the ground.

It is important to the Adkins that these pumpkin seeds are grown with integrity, traceability, and low food miles.

They have outlets in Whanganui, and nationwide, and their products are available online.

Even the packaging has been thought about with their oil bottles carefully cocooned in beautiful wool that can be put to various use in your home or garden.

These pumpkin seeds are 100% natural, raw, wholesome and spray-free.

Summer Hill pumpkin seeds, oil and flour

They make a tasty healthy snack, and being high protein, are a great alternative in vegetarian and vegan dishes and are versatile in a wide range of baking and cooking.

I was lucky enough to have tried some of Clare’s date scones made with pumpkin flour (1-3 ratio with normal flour) and enjoyed them so much that I took some of the ingredients home to experiment making my favourite bread recipe and what a success!

Recipe: Pumpkin flour bread

Pumpkin flour beer bread topped with cheese and pumpkin seeds and pumpkin seed oil for dipping.

This is a no-knead recipe and great if you are caught short with no bread in the house.

Ingredients

3 cups flour. I replace one cup with the pumpkin flour.

3 tsp baking powder

1 bottle of beer (330ml) rinsed out after use (another 75ml approx.) This gives the yeast…d o not use light.

Method

Mix flour, baking powder and beer together, the mixture needs to be quite wet, put into a non-stick bread or loaf tin.

Sprinkle lightly with some grated cheddar cheese and a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds.

Bake at 200C fan bake for 50 mins.

When cooled, remove from pan.

Slice into small pieces and dip in some delicious pumpkin oil and your favourite dukka, what a treat!

For more info and suggestions on how to use pumpkin seeds go to their website https://summerhillseeds.co.nz