when 13 pumpkins just isn't enough....

Last weekend after we got back from the cruise, we decided to just take it very easy... still kind of suffering from the tummy bug (still *am* suffering!) and so when I saw in the paper that they were having a Harvest Days at the local nursery, it sounded like an interesting adventure.

The nursery is only about a mile and a half from the house (and we knew they have bathrooms!!) so we weren't venturing too far. Plus it was a gorgeous day -- sunny and cool, beautiful.

At these Harvest Days, you can get pumpkins for carving -- they even had the man who currently holds the Guinness Book of World Records for fastest pumpkin carver -- Jerry Ayers (who is from Ohio!) -- he was fascinating to watch and it was really cool because when we arrived at the nursery and walked over to where he was carving, he was just finishing up carving the pumpkin he was working on. When he was done, everyone else got up and walked away, but because we'd only seen a minute or so, I decided to stay there (Andy got up and was walking around taking pics of the entries for the World's Biggest Pumpkin contest) -- Jerry struck up a conversation with me as he began another pumpkin, asking me if I am a carver (which I am -- I love to carve pumpkins!) and so we chatted and he gave me a leaflet about carving geometric patterns in pumkins. It was fascinating to hear him talking about carving and he had lots of great tips too -- when he begins to carve, he cuts around the stem with straight lines, and where the lines meet up, he carves a diamond out -- with half the diamond in the lid and half in the main part of the pumkin. He does this so that the heat from the candle can get out, and also so that it is very simple to see which way the lid goes back on! Also he mentioned that if you don't like the smell of burning pumpkin flesh when you have a candle lit inside your pumpkin, you can put nutmeg and cinnamon on the inside of the lid -- that way when the heat of the candle reaches it, it smells wonderful -- like pumpkin pie!

So having been very energized by his talking and really craving some carving -- we set off around to the back of the nursery (to grab some yummy food!!) to take the "All you can carry for $9.99" challenge. The lady in charge of "judging" that was so nice -- I went over to her and asked what the trick is to getting lots of pumpkins and she told me it's all about balance. The rules say that you have to take at least one step to qualify (and she added that the step can actually be a backwards one! VERY helpful!!)

So we scouted around and found a few bigger ones and several smaller ones -- and stacked them all on this table where she was judging. The plan was that Andy was going to carry them and I was going to load him up one at a time until we reached full capacity. The judge was really funny too -- once she heard him speak she thought he was an Aussie, but was really amused when she found out a Brit was about to take the challenge. We wanted her to take a photo of Andy when he was at full capacity, but she misunderstood us. She took one while we were in process. (see below)

In our first attempt, we got Andy loaded up with 7 pumpkins!! And since we were so successful, we decided to go again -- and the second time we managed 6 pumpkins. So for $20, we ended up with 13 pumpkins -- not bad when normally they are $1 per pound (our pumpkins totalled around 60 lbs!!)

I love this picture of Andy with the pumpkins -- we got lots of comments from passers-by because they were so impressed -- they all thought he'd done all these pumpkins in one go!!

My hubby the strong-man!!!!

Posted by kristen at October 14, 2006 2:58 PM