It all started back in October of 2020 with a delightful trip to the pumpkin patch.
After checking out many pumpkins and taking many pictures, we decided to bring home this little guy.
Rather than carve him up for Halloween, we gave him a bath and put him on display.
When he started to get soft, we put him our backyard to feed the local flora and fauna. And then winter happened.
In the spring time, among all the weeds growing in our backyard were a few pumpkin plants. Once identified, their massive leaves were hard to miss. It was a pumpkin-patch miracle!
For weeks, our pumpkin plants grew. One day, flowers started to appear.
Before we knew it, our back yard was bursting with giant yellow pumpkin flowers. Pumpkin flowers are magnificent.
One day, a tiny pumpkin started growing off one of the plants.
And it grew.
And grew.
Finally, we were heading out of town one weekend and we opted to clip the pumpkin off the vine to keep it from getting noshed on by squirrels.
What can you do with a tiny green pumpkin? First, we carefully extracted and dried the seeds. How amazing is that our one little pumpkin can give us more pumpkins!
With the seeds separated, we turned our attention to cooking the the pumpkin. It was green, so we doubted it would taste good. We followed a 'recipe' a civil war soldier logged in his diary when he found himself with little to eat but a green pumpkin: slice up the pumpkin, add a little salt and sugar, and fry in butter until till tender. It was delicious!
As the last hard frost date approached, we took our dried pumpkin seeds and soaked them in water to get them ready for planting.
When we were confident the ground wasn't going to freeze again, we picked a few places around our property to plant the seeds. To increase our odds of success, we mixed our pumpkin's seeds with a packet of seed we purchased off of Amazon.
A few days later, the seeds sprouted! Of course, this is how plants work and this is all perfectly normal. Still, seeing a sprouting seed feels like witnessing a little miracle.
And now our next generation of pumpkins is growing. Will they grow massive leaves like their daddy did? Will they produce beautiful flowers and maybe even another tasty and beautiful pumpkin? We'll have to wait and see.
The End.
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