Was the blue ribbon award-winning squash stolen or misplaced? After all, it’s kind of hard to misplace a 4-foot-long squash.
Lydia Nichols of Chesterfield, Virginia, tells WTOP she’s holding out hope that she’ll be reunited with the tromboncino squash she grew in her backyard, which won a blue ribbon at the Virginia State Fair, and then vanished.
“It started out as a tiny little seed I planted back in April,” said Nichols. “At the time it was growing, I could tell it was going to be something amazing.”
While most butternuts are grown as winter squash, tromboncino squash is harvested and eaten when the fruits are young and tender, like yellow summer squash and green zucchini.
By the time Nichols harvested her monster squash, it measured 47 inches long, and was just shy of 9 pounds. Her daughter suggested she enter it in the Virginia State Fair in Doswell, north of Richmond.
“I dropped her off Sept. 26,” she said (referring to the squash, not her daughter). “[The fair official] gave me a claim ticket with my name on it that matched up with the ticket he attached to the tromboncino squash itself, so when I picked it up, there’d be no problem.”
However, when Nichols returned to the fair on Oct. 5, claim ticket in hand, the squash was missing.
“We couldn’t find it. It was just gone,” she said.
People at the fair weren’t certain what had happened to it.
“I left empty-handed, except for the blue ribbon that it won,” Nichols said. “It won first place, which is a little bittersweet now.”
Why would someone steal a squash?
Nichols and her family developed a few theories as to why someone might snatch a squash.
“One is the seeds,” hypothesized Nichols. “With a squash that size, the seeds could go on to produce even bigger squash, and maybe even more blue ribbons down the road.”
“Maybe somebody wanted to see what they taste like, because they’re kind of an unusual thing that you don’t see at supermarkets,” she added.
Online recipes suggest tromboncino squash can be sliced into medallions, seasoned, and cooked like summer squash or zucchini.
Unlike gourds that can be dried and kept permanently, “which would be really cool,” Nichols said her prizewinner would probably start to deteriorate after nine months.
Did she file a missing gourd report with police?
“I did consider contacting the Ashland Police Department, but part of me thought, maybe I’m taking it a little too far. After all, yes, it is just a squash,” said Nichols. “I figured maybe the police wouldn’t want to bother with something, that was important to someone else.”
While she never filed a police report, Nichols offered a reward of $100 in a Facebook post for the missing award-winner. Within a few days, strangers offered to bump the reward up to $335 to incentivize its return.
She said fair organizers have reached out to other participants, asking if any had mistakenly taken home a 4-foot long award-winning squash. So far, no one has come forward.
“I really hope it can still be recovered, but we haven’t had any leads yet,” said Nichols. “Every day that goes by, I get a little less hopeful, but there’s still a glimmer of hope that we’ll be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor.” (If you were wondering, Google says squash is a vegetable, rather a fruit.)
“It’s just a symbol of all the hard work we’ve put into the garden, growing these things. And, not only that, it’s the community I’ve found within gardening, and the joy I’ve found from being able to garden,” she said. “It’s more than a squash.”
