20th October

Pumpkin time of the year again.

Luckily Erin and Calum are on school holidays, which means we get a couple of extra pair of hands for lifting all the pumpkins out of the field.

Unfortunately, we can’t get customers to walk to the field and pick their own.

Which would be ideal for us and would make pumpkin picking a more realistic experience.

The filed is to far away from the car park and would make a huge carry for everyone with their selected pumpkins.

So, we have around twenty half tonne boxes, each box can take fifty big pumpkins or around eighty mixed sizes, so we have a load of trips to get all the pumpkins up to the farm shop.

The pumpkins need gently placed in the boxes so they don’t get bruised, if they get bruised, they can rot, the same as laying them out.

We had cut the amount we sow down this year, as every farm are now doing pumpkins as an extra at this time of the year, so there is a load of places to choose from.

We had a ruff count at the start of the week, and we think there are around nine hundred.

This year they are not as big as usual; the lack of rain has stunted the growth a wee bit.

But we have very few rotten ones this year, and they are all looking great.

We are doing pumpkin picking over two Sundays this year, the 19th and the 26th.

And we cannot leave the pumpkins out so each Sunday morning we need to get in early and lay all the pumpkins out and get everything set up, and at night then take it all down and re load any pumpkins up that we still have.

So, it will be a busy couple of weekends.