Thinking of Autumn

I'm a summer girl all the way.  Love summer.  But, I must admit, that I would enjoy a little cooler weather right about now, especially when the pumpkins are looking so fall-ish.  We actually have had a fairly mild summer temperature wise and it has been lovely, but the whole year has been very dry.  If we didn't have a deep water well, there is no way I could have kept my garden (which I expanded this year) so productive all season.

These are the pumpkins I picked just today, 18 of them.  I've picked at least that many already and have probably as many that aren't ripe yet.  I rinse them off in my handy ol' farm sink, then carry as many as I can and line them up on the fence to later make several trips carrying them to the house.

These pumpkins are grown from heirloom seeds, called Jack O' Lantern, from my survival seed kit that I bought a couple of years ago.  I think they're a type of sugar pumpkin and they are quite sweet when roasted even without any kind of seasoning.

Once again, I've taken to the internet in search of tasty pumpkin recipes.  Every few days, I roast a couple of pumpkins and butternuts, scoop out the meat and freeze it for later use.  But, I'm trying to use them fresh, too, as well as giving many away.

I had a good harvest of potatoes, too, which have been sitting in a box in the breezeway where I store my extra produce.  I was rinsing those off in the farm sink before I brought them in until I read that they will last longer if you don't rinse them.  So the last bunch (about half the harvest) that I dug up, I just put in the box with the dirt still on them.  Guess what?  Not true.  I had to go through the box yesterday and throw out about half of the potatoes because they're starting to go bad.  And it's the ones that I left the dirt on that are going bad.  The ones I rinsed off are still fine.