Harvesting and Carving Pumpkins

Harvest

We had cousins join us for the pumpkin harvest this year!  All the pumpkins you see below came from the same seed package, but are obviously two distinct varieties.  The hugs ones start out very yellow and round and grow to be gigantic.  The regular size ones start out dark green and eventually ripen to orange.

This one, for example, weighed a whopping 70+ lbs!  There were three that were all around 70 lbs.  There was another which would have been even bigger if a gopher hadn't started eating it from the underside.  By the time we realized it, the inside had been eaten out and the shell was a rotting mess.  Mike tried to pick in up to throw it to the chickens, but it just fell apart in his hands.  It was the worst thing I have smelled since February.

 These girls rolled this giant pumpkin from the garden to the house.

 Even Curly Sue helped!

And Blue Eyes was close behind.

 Caleb was grumpy because Mike wouldn't let him use the cleaver that he was using to cut the pumpkins from the vine.

We moved all these babies into our house.  Later we harvested some Amish pie pumpkins (maybe 6 or 7) that we had forgotten about.  We've had hundreds of pounds of pumpkins dotting our concrete kitchen/living room floor here in our basement dwelling.  Mike donated one to a charity auction for a group he is involved with.  It sold for $70!  We have been cooking the rest up and pureeing it.   Oh, and we carved three of them!  Now we are down to 5 pumpkins.

Carving

I think this is the first year we have carved pumpkins since the kids have been old enough to participate and remember it.  They have plenty of pumpkin memories though (remember this and this?). We carved them for family night, the week before Halloween.  Mike's mom came down to to join us.  It was really nice to have one grown-up per kid.

Reaching into the pumpkin slime was a favorite!

 This must be our classic family pose.

 All the other kids were showing off their goopy hands when I took their picture, so Josh followed suit, only his hands were clean.  He did not want to stick his hands in the slime, which surprised me.

 Josh used markers to embellish his pumpkin.

We couldn't seem to get a picture of everyone smiling even though they were actually all happy.  Eliza insisted on ears for her pumpkin and told the boys that theirs weren't finished because they didn't have any ears.