Day Dreaming about the Great Pumpkin

As you may have figured out we have a small farm, and we use every bit of it to the best advantage available. Fall is my favorite season and I have a crazy love for pumpkins.Big pumpkins, small pumpkins, different colored pumpkins, fake pumpkins, I love them all.

So in my love for pumpkins, in 2012,  I got the great idea that I would have our very own Our Greene Acre Pumpkin Patch! How awesome, kids could pick a pumpkin, we'd have Apple cider and pictures and all of that happy fall afternoon fun. Planted tons of seeds, six different varieties and they came up great. They were growing right along and then BAM , August rolled around and of course here comes Hurricane Irene, Tons of rain and wind and it did my pumpkin patch in. I was discouraged but I still held out hope for another patch in the future. Last year I sowed a few Long Island Cheese Pumpkin seeds in the flower bed up front and WOW, those took off. They climbed the bushes around them, and almost made it to the road. We kept turning the runners back towards the house. No crazy weather this time and I was rewarded with about 10 pumpkins off of just those couple of vines.

Following that success, I wanted to try the Pumpkin Patch again, but we were a bit short on garden since the 300 tomato plants, along with the other plants we had were doing so well. In steps Jimmy, our great neighbor from just down the road. He had a patch of garden that he wasn't using and we were welcome to it. All he wanted in return was a couple of pumpkins and a tour for his grandson. We could totally do that! Seeds planted, check. Organic (smelly) Fish Fertilizer in, Check. Plants growing like wildfire, Check. Blooms everywhere, Check.

 Too much rain in August, Check. Arggh 
Six and a half inches of rain in just four days,My Pumpkin Patch was on a bit of an incline and the rain just washed everything out and then we got mold, it was crazy and heart breaking, We had so much rain it cut ditches in the fields and washed plants right out. I couldn't believe it, I was just sick,

 I'll try again next year and fingers crossed it will eventually happen. We are lucky we didn't lose everything in our garden we had so many things that were ready and we harvested the majority of it a bit early but we saved it.
So instead of the Great Pumpkin, I'm settling for making these great Pumpkin Hats. The orders have kept me busy but I would have loved to see some of them running around in our patch, but there is always next year...