Age Old Advice

“Try it and see how it works”, is good advice for plenty of things, well maybe not bungee jumping.  However, it would seem great advice when growing new things, and as it came straight from the one we’ve made the resident expert, Our Friend the Farmer I had every reason to follow it, that of course and the fact that I have few other options.

The call to our expert came over concern about the pumpkins (of course).  My pumpkin obsession continues, but I feel much better about it now that I have proof that it is ‘normal’.  My Neighbor dropped by to share the fruit from her pear tree.  She eagerly said, “I want to see your pumpkins.”  Music to my ears.  I confessed to her that I might be driving my family crazy with my pumpkin obsession.  She said, “Oh, I do the same thing to my family and I’ve only got 3 pumpkins”.  So, at my 30 plus pumpkins, I realize that this is just a ‘normal’ farm thing.  (The Teen is taking High School Psychology and says that this is called ‘Transference”.  UGH, kids).

The pumpkin emergency came as I found a handful of the pumpkins have gotten rotten.  Rotten and still on the vine!  This is what led to my concern and my call to Our Friend the Farmer.  The question, “Can my good pumpkins catch the ‘rotten-ness’ from the ‘bad’ pumpkins?  Should I cut them and move them and if so, will they still continue to turn orange?”  Our Friend the Farmer said he’s not on that good of terms with Mother Nature, but he’d confer with all the other farmers in the valley and get back to me, or maybe he said he’d just ask his Son The Farmer who has grown pumpkins commercially.

Luckily for me, Our Friend the Farmer makes house calls, so it wasn’t long before he showed up to examine the pumpkins himself while bringing us a cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini and lemon cucumbers from his vegetable garden.  (Yep, our neighbors are the best)!  We checked out the pumpkins and found that many are turning orange and most quite healthy.  The vines have mostly done their work, so I could cut some off and set them up to see if they’d continue to turn orange, “try it and see how it works” and no the healthy ones won’t catch the rot from the rotten ones, phew.

“Why were some turning rotten?”  I asked,

Age old farmer wisdom, “Ellen, they just don’t all make it”.