Pumpkin Season

HThe last two weekends have been fun because we have been harvesting our pumpkins!  The bounty of our efforts is now in front of us.  Our time spent cultivating and weeding paid off and, to my delight, the pumpkin vines mostly dominated the weeds that managed to survive.  There were several foot high weeds growing at strange angles to find the sun as opposed to last year, when pumpkin vines were long and stringy and climbing the weeds.  There was plenty of rain and the hail that visited the area didn't really hurt them. 

I am disappointed in the gourd production. What you see there is most of the gourds I found in the patch.  Oh well, next year...maybe they should be on their own and not mixed in. Maybe the pumpkin vines are too big.  We are already making plans for next year and looking at seed company websites for different varieties.  We want larger pumpkins next year since there weren't a lot of good carving sized ones in this patch (there were some but not many compared to the hundreds of "baby bear" pie baking pumpkins  we picked. 

Speaking of pie baking, I have been giving a lot of these away to my friends and neighbors and four women, younger women close to my age, were going to use them to bake pies and cook.  Whaaaa?  My mom doesn't even do that and she was the Future Homemakers of American Minnesota state president in 1974.  So now I want to try it.  I guess it's just like cooking acorn squash and I have done that before.  Well, one time.  I cooked one once. 

This pile was from last week. 

Although we only had two different seed varieties in the mix there were some fun variations.  Some were smooth, some were bumpy, and some had green streaks and stripes. 

Here is a picture of the patch.  It was six long rows.  Can anyone find the dog? 

I thought the kids might be excited about the picking process but they really didn't care.  Maybe when they are older...

In this fun little photo we have Milo and his cousin Alice with Tessa in the background wearing Ben's old rain boots and a hunting hat. 

In this photo you can see a small orange pumpkin back in the long grass behind me.  That was a damaged pumpkin that we asked Ben to throw in the woods.  Tessa saw it and started carrying pumpkins over there and throwing them in the woods.  Then she threw a fit when she got in trouble.  Oh, that three year old charm!