While it's a little early to completely report about the pumpkin harvest, I thought you might like to see a picture of what the early harvest has brought into our house. We've already processed two of the three pumpkins that have been harvested. The pumpkin has been cooked, scraped out of it's shell, pureed, the water drained off, and frozen. I'm still needing to investigate how we might use the other uniquely-shaped squash that continue to come into the house. If anyone has any suggestions, leave a comment below.
The inside of our house isn't just full of squash and pumpkins, the yard, too, has been overrun by Farmer Joe's pumpkin patch.
Previously our yard and garden, this pumpkin patch is a trove of hidden pumpkins and squash working to ripen before the first freezes are upon us in October/November. The tomatoes are all but gone, but we are getting our first peppers (two yellow and one red). Pretty amazing since I can't even see where the pepper plants are at in this picture. Farmer Joe has expressed some concern that the field pumpkins (the kind we use for carving jack-o-lanterns) have been beaten out by the eating pumpkins (the kind I puree and put in my freezer for use in muffins, breads, waffles, pancakes, and cakes). I don't mind really, but I do hope we have something to carve in October.
Farmer Joe's work is not all fun and games. Recently his assistant found this
in the breezeway near our front door. Gross, right?
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| Our good neighbor, Carol, agreed to put her hand up there to help show the size more correctly. She's braver than I am, I was almost afraid to get close enough to take the picture. |
I charged Farmer Joe with the mission of figuring out what it was and destroying it (actually, I didn't care what it was, I just wanted it destroyed, but he has an insatiable hunger for knowledge, so he looked it up). This insect is called a mud dauber (sometimes also called "dirt dauber," "dirt digger," "dirt dobber," "dirt diver", or "mud wasp"). More specifically this is an organ pipe mud dauber. A kind of a wasp that builds nests in cylindrical shapes resembling an organ or pipe. Farmer Joe informs me that these wasps rarely sting and that they lay their eggs on spiders inside the nests. He said there probably wasn't even a wasp around anymore and that they were helping because they kill spiders. I was uninterested in these details and immediately brought him the bottle of Raid so he could kill whatever might or might not be living inside. He later knocked it down to find a worm (presumably the larvae) living inside (again, really gross). Farmer Joe's a handy guy.
For his next task, I have comissioned him with eliminating the furry, small house guest that is residing outside in our covered patio. He made a short appearance the other night as we were eating dinner outdoors. I guess our cat is sleeping at the switch. It's okay, I'm confident that if Farmer Joe can tame our pumpkin patch and kill wasps nests, he can take care of our furry, unwelcome friend, Mickey.
Ewwww! Creepy!
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