PUMPKINS!!!

On Friday we harvested around 200 pumpkins from the high school agriculture farm. Pumpkins you want to harvest with as much of the stem as possible. After picking all of these pumpkins I suddenly wanted to carve one. There are no leaves changing color to show that it is fall, but we do have bright orange pumpkins and other winter squash. On our table at market we have Moapa Squash, Spaghetti Squash, Butternut Squash, Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkins, Long Island Cheese Pumpkins, and Musk De Provence Pumpkins. The Long Island Cheese Pumpkins are called this because they look like a wheel of cheese.
(I just got this picture off of the internet.)

Both the Long Island Cheese and the Musk De Provence (I might be spelling the second one wrong because I know you pronounce it with a French accent and I am not sure of French spelling.) are Heirloom variety, and are very dense and are really good for cooking.

At Market the most likely way of selling pumpkins is if you see a child standing by the adult with the money. If the child sees the pumpkins they want one... after all Halloween is coming up and you have to have a jack-o-lantern on your porch. I love seeing the little kids with the pumpkins! A toddler sitting in a stroller holding a large pumpkin that they can't even fit their arms around is a really cute sight.
It's funny the kids often go for the little pumpkins instead of the large.

We actually had three markets this week. We had our usual one on Thursday, and then we had two others on Saturday at the exact same time. So we divided and conquered. We went to the first location which was a Lobster Festival... (I have no idea why there would be a lobster festival in the middle of the desert.) we ran a bunch of pumpkins, melons, and honey in, set up, left Jordan there to run the table while we went to set up at the next location. The next place was harder to find and we had to do a lot of U-Turns. When we got there the closest parking was probably a 1/4 of a mile away from where our table was to be setup. Well 1/4 of a mile by the time you hauled everything from the trailer down the spot and back up to the trailer to get more. Now just imagine carrying at least 50 pumpkins as well as the melons and honey that we still had in the trailer this distance. I am now slightly sore to say the least. Me, Mat, and Katie stayed at this market. We probably only sold 10-12 pumpkins.

I also went to Valley of Fire with Mat and Katie this week. Apparently it is a National Park, which I did not know until just this week. We went on the trail Mouses Tank and saw some petroglyph's along the way.
(both of these images are just copied off of google images, once I get the pictures off of my camera I will have a picture of me in front of the petroglyph's.)
Mouse was in Indian who hid here in the 1800. I don't know if there is really any other water source in the Valley of Fire.
We also saw the white domes and the rainbow vista. It is a very beautiful place. And want to explore more of it with a better camera, and my family.

My chores this week were Pigs, and Turkeys. So I got to muck out their pens on Friday morning. I think this is worse then doing the kitty litter. It smells worse. Turkeys actually smell worse than pigs.

One of our pigs has practically chewed off the other two pigs ears. You can tell which pig is the culprit because his ears are absolutely perfect still.

Last night we had lobster for dinner. While I was washing something Mat came up beside me and started talking to me. I looked over at him to answer his question and instead shrieked. He had been holding a lobster body right by my face waiting for me to look at him and see the lobster a hand's width away. Mat can be so vexing sometimes.

Thats all for this week. ttfn.