Busy day out

J16, K10 and I drove down to the farm to see my parents today. My sister, Julie, was here from Colorado along with her husband. (V stayed home to attend a memorial service for the woman who had been the pastor of the church where he used to work as office manager.) We had a lovely visit. J16 and my BIL, Dave, each brought their violins and played a bit together. Then we went off to Kathy's Pumpkin Patch. Kathy had been Julie's best friend throughout school and now has a wonderful business just a mile from my parent's home. Mom and Dad supply her with their excess garden produce during the summer so it is a win-win for everyone.

It was cool and blustery (temps in the mid 50's and windy) and K10 refused to bring a sweatshirt this morning so we didn't let him do the corn maze like he wanted, but the children did pick out some pretty cool looking gourds.

Maybe some like this for the Goth Garden next year???

After our trip to the pumpkin patch, we headed out into my parent's orchard for a quick harvest.

Mmm, little sugar pears.

I see more pear chutney in the future. YUM!

A few of the apples.

It's a good thing I always have my cloth grocery bags in the car because they came in handy for hauling apples and pears.

I took three of our Galeux d'eysines down but traded for three butternut squash from Mom's garden.

Much less daunting than 15 pound pumpkins!

We made it home just before sunset and headed straight out into the garden. There was time for one last harvest and then we threw sheets over the eggplant and peppers. I'll hope for the best.

Is this the last harvest??

I didn't bother to cover the tomatoes. They are just about done and besides, I don't have that many sheets. With the temps now forecast to dip to 31 F tonight, we also picked a few more galeux d'eysines. Well, more than a few. Eight more to be precise. That brings the harvest total to 26!!! Not bad from two plants, and when you figure that the pumpkins are averaging 15- 17 lbs each (lightest so far- 12, heaviest- 26.8), that's a LOT of squashy goodness (around 400 lbs!). I've now given away 8 and we've eaten/preserved 2 but that means I've still got 16 of these monsters in the shop. So, the offer still stands- if anyone near Iowa City wants one, let me know.

I've got just enough tahini left to make one more big batch of baba ganoush with the eggplant, so that's on the agenda for tomorrow. J16 insisted on picking more peppers. Not that we need more. LOL!! She picked an entire 5 quart pail full. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. Maybe they'll be destined for compost.....

Oh, and one last thing. I did my research on curcurbits and found that my galeux should be free from cross pollination since I didn't have another species of C. Maxima in the garden. So, if anyone would like seeds, let me know so I can save enough to go around.