Demand Grows For Pumpkin Seed Oil

Demand Grows For Pumpkin Seed Oil 31-5-9 Adventurous cooks and natural food enthusiasts have a new option for healthy cooking oil. It's made from pumpkin seeds by Ken Seguine and his partner, Jay Gilbertson. After their Wisconsin pumpkin field has been harvested, it looks like vandals have hit it. Harvesters whack the pumpkins open with machetes, while other workers follow wearing rubber gloves and scooping the seeds into buckets, then pouring them into tubs. The membrane is washed from the seeds in a special seed washer. Then the seeds are dried on drying racks by fans and low heat in the greenhouse where the whole process started the spring before when the pumpkin plants were started. "The seeds must be completely dry in order to extract the oil," Seguine says. "The seeds are lightly roasted to enhance flavor and get more oil out of them." A company, Botanic Oil, in Spooner, Wisconsin, uses a German-made cold press to extract the oil, then lets the fines settle out and bottles the oil, The oil looks khaki brown or slightly green. Seguine describes the oil's flavor as rich and slightly nutty - similar to the taste of roasted pumpkin seeds. After five years of trial and error, and learning the stresses and challenges of farming, Seguine, a natural food supplement marketer, remains enthusiastic about pumpkin seed oil. He and Gilbertson moved from Minneapolis to their Wisconsin farm in 2001 with the goal of developing a niche market. Seguine had tasted pumpkin seed oil from Austria, where it's widely used. "I'm on a mission," Seguine says. "People love it once they taste it." Besides tasting good, the oil is rich in Omega 3 fatty acids and Zeaxanthin, a beta-carotene that researchers believe is important for eye health, specifically the macula. The pumpkins are a naked seed variety, which means the seeds don't have a hard shell. About 13,000 pumpkin plants were started in black plastic mulch to prevent weeds. Three strands of electric wire surrounded the patch to keep deer out since they'll break the pumpkins open with their hooves to get at the seeds. The oil content in the seeds can run as high as 50 percent. It takes between 7 and 15 pumpkins to yield an 8.5-oz. bottle of oil, which sells for $18.95. Seguine says he has no problem finding buyers. The Wisconsin farm is in the process of being certified organic, and Seguine says he plans to grow cover crops and use other techniques to eventually replace the plastic mulch. Harvest, at the end of September, is labor intensive, Seguine adds, and he hires about 20 local people to gather the seeds over a period of a week or so. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Ken Seguine, Hay River Foods, N13859 250th Street, Prairie Farm, Wisconsin 54762 (ph 800 928-7145; info@hayriver.net; www.hayriver.net).

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