It's Halloween!

in less than 5 months that is and we plan to be ready. Not so long ago, our neighbor J used to grow the most beautiful pumpkins and then pile them high on a farm wagon at harvest time, for sale to drive bys. Folks from all around knew of her pumpkins and took advantage of the great variety, colors and shape. She quit this practice, a huge amount of work we are discovering, and even offered us her land to grow the pumpkins on if we wanted to continue the tradition. But due to rapid growing stupidity we said No thank you, as felt we had enough on our plates.

Now years later, we have decided to venture forth into the land of the Great Pumpkin after all. Why we didn't do it "back then" when  the ground was well prepared at our neighbors field and ready to go, I cannot fully explain but since it appears we may be here awhile yet until the perfect buyer comes along, we are going to make the best of our blessings. One of them is pig manure.

Yes, I did just say manure is a blessing, natures' perfect fertilizer. Last year the patch behind our goat barn (turned pig barn) was filled with pigs, eating every green thing in its way, except pigweed of course. I'm not kidding, our pigs will not eat pigweed.

This year pigs have been rotated out and about and that area was wide open for a new life, 1000 square feet to work with. (Not so square, more like a triangle)

It had many benefits to offer. Lots of sun. Good drainage. Well fertilized. On the other hand, due to the lack of rain in our area, the limited amount of organic material  like straw and the packing down by lots of little pig feet, the ground is on the hard side.

Actually, it's more on the ROCK HARD of hard side. Note the pigs gathered to give advice in the background. In order to even get the seeds in the ground we had to install dynamite in chosen sections, run for cover and then drop a few seeds in the holes.

It's convenient our neighbors often indulge in target practice with their guns thus any suspicious noises can most easily be blamed on them. Not that we ever would of course. Then we dropped the innocent seeds of various pumpkin types, big ones, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones, blue ones, green ones but not PINK ones because my blog friend Miss Effie, never told me about the pink ones until AFTER we planted them, seems she wants all the pink pumpkin business for herself. HA! See if I ever link to her self pick flower business business ever again!

Hopefully, we'll have enough pumpkins to sell on our own hay rack set up alongside our little farm store this next fall. Customers seem appreciative of having several things to choose from when venturing so far out for their raw milk and organic meat.

Because the field was WAY out there, we had to hook up several hoses in order to water the seeds enough for any hope of germination. Look way way out and you'll see the dedicated farmer with said hose. I figure if we get at least 10% germination rate it will have been worth ...not one bit of the time we spent out there.

Will we ever learn ?