It’s the middle of October already and that means pumpkin time! This year we’ll have two opportunities for you to come out and pick out your pumpkins for the holidays – this Saturday, October 17th and the next Saturday, October 24th between 10 AM and 2 PM. The 
pumpkin patch grew well and ripened quite early this year. We’ve got a nice crop of Jack-o-Lantern style (35₵/lb), beautiful and delicious Rouge Vif d’Etampe or Cinderella (50₵/lb), and compact Winter Luxury baking pumpkins (80₵/lb).
Pumpkins las
t a long time, so you can get your Thanksgiving and Christmas pumpkins now too, and they can decorate your kitchen until it’s time to make those pies. (Of course there’s no need to wait until a holiday to bake a pie or cook pumpkins in other ways. Personally, I’m looking forward to trying Andrew’s pumpkin recipe below.) Any of the varieties can be used for cooking, by the way. The Winter Luxury are called “pie” pumpkins for their dense silky textured flesh, and the Rouge Vif d’Etampes are known as “soup” pumpkins with their sweet dark orange flesh, but even the Jack-o-lantern pumpkins can make a fine pie if you like a more robust texture.
To add a little fun to the event, we plan to set up the trebuchet (one of our kids’ High School projects – like a catapult) and hurl some less than perfect pumpkins over the fence of the restoration area to our goats, who love pumpkins. If one happens to have a field of pumpkins, a herd of hungry goats, and a pumpkin hurling device, those pumpkins were just meant to be hurled!
You’ll see the farm in our fall transition state. The place where the pumpkins grew is being prepared for next year’s strawberries. We’re also taking out our current strawberry patch during these next couple weeks. With the work on the well, there’s a fair amount of mess and disruption on the farm right now, but it’s the temporary disorder from which will come new lush crops; just like the brown hillsides will turn to green with the winter rains we hope will come too.
As always, please wear close-toed shoes and long pants when visiting the farm, and bring a sweatshirt in case it’s foggy or cool (or even rainy?!). We look forward to seeing you this or next Saturday!
Directions to the farm can be found here.
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