smashing pumpkins

Tom cut down the buckwheat today. (Also bushhogged my cantaloupes by mistake). Hot and windy. The bees are pretty well finished with it and the flowers are starting to form seed pods. I’ve been harping about it so I can plant our ‘giant pumpkin’ seedling for the market’s annual contest the end of October. I also want to put in some miserable little wilted squash plants that have been strangling in their green plastic containers since May. Good Luck.

One year we won the Pumpkin Contest. The prize was free stall fees for the next year. WOW. Now we get a plastic trophy if someone remembers to get them. Ken McCutcheon, another beekeeper won the previous year with a giant specimen that (rumour had it) he even peed on at night. He grew even bigger ones than the one he submitted, but when he went to lift them into the truck with the loader, they broke in half. These are Dills’ Atlantic Giant seeds – potential behemoths.

One of the farmers told me that when deer find pumpkins, they often trample on them and then eat the seeds. I told my organic farmer friend, Sharon McBride, who is my partner in grime at the market, that I was going to fashion a set of deer legs and hoofs and go and 'trample' on some pumpkins if I get wind that anyone's pumpkin is getting bigger than mine.