Tag: pumpkins

Haunted History of Halloween Favorites–Pumpkins and Apples

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Day 167 of 365

My farmer-ish side has always loved the foods of harvest season. And my little bit witchy side has always loved magical stories and folklore. If there’s a superstitious story, I have always wanted to hear it, so I decided to put these loves together and tell some stories tonight about my favorite fall foods, apples and pumpkins, which are not only delicious but have an aesthetic that feels a little bit magical to me.

photo credit: Alina Scheck, Unsplash

Pumpkins

You have to start with pumpkins, right? Of course, it wasn’t pumpkins people originally carved into Jack O Lanterns on All Hallow’s Eve; it was turnips. According to the history, Celtic people in Ireland and Scotland carved faces into turnips in order to keep “Stingy Jack” away. The myth goes that Stingy Jack tricked the Devil into paying for his drink, and when Stingy Jack died, God would not let him into heaven, and the Devil would not let him into Hell because of his trickery. So Stingy jack was doomed to haunt the earth as an angry spirit, and people carved faces into turnips and put a candle in them, placing them in their windowsills to keep away Stringy Jack and other dark spirits.

When immigrants came to the United States, they brought the Jack O Lantern tradition with them, but here in North America, pumpkins were abundant in the fall and made fantastic Jack O Lanterns. Now, here we are, still carving pumpkins and putting candles inside them. How wonderful is that?

I carved this pumpkin a few years ago, and I think it will always be one of my favorites.

But pumpkins have a magnificent history outside of our Halloween traditions. In my research, I found that Native Americans used pumpkins for everything from medicine to pies; they even dried the shells to make bowls. What a beautiful bowl a pumpkin would make, right? And there is the Native American legend of the three sisters, which appears in many different cultures in different forms, but the pumpkin or squash, along with corn and beans, are life giving women when they are together.

Apples

I have written about apples before, and I think most people know a lot of the traditional myths and legends related to apples. There’s the Adam and Eve story, and in more than one culture, apples are associated with eternal youth. I thought I would find some additional and interesting apple stories to share. I think my favorite new-to-me apple myth is that unicorns have been associated with apple trees because they love apples. I mean, who doesn’t? So, of course, unicorns love apples.

But I also learned that apples have their own kind of magic. Because apples ripen in the fall, their seeds have to make it through the long, dark winter before they can start to grow in the spring. Because of this, apples represent a magic of trust. And, along the lines of trust, I read that, if you want happiness in your relationship, cut an apple in half and share it with your loved one. I don’t know about you, but trust and love go hand in hand for me.

I also learned about ghost apples, and they are so beautiful–both kinds. One kind of ghost apple occurs when an apple rots inside ice that forms around the apple after an ice storm, and a shape of an apple is left in ice. There is also a variety of apple that is white and called a ghost apple. It is a variety with white skin and white flesh and is apparently more common in other countries but will grow here in North America. I read they taste kind of a golden delicious. Wouldn’t it be cool to see a real-life ghost apple?

I wish to write more, but it is late. I also ran across the history of candy corn in my research for this post, and while candy corn doesn’t seem very farmer-ish, it’s my favorite Halloween candy, though it seems to be hated by so many. I guess I always love the underdog.

Pumpkin Progress

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

164 of 365

Today was the best day. It was far too busy, but it was still a great day. We just finished the second Farmer-ish online reading party, and it was wonderful. I got to listen to stories about happy cows, chicken folklore, and the thin veil between worlds during this time of the year. It was magnificent.

And I wanted to share that Ruby is doing fairly well in her adjustment to life back in the coop. I worried so much about her since she had lived in the garage since early May, but she did it. She complains to me a bit at bedtime, but she goes back to the coop. She, of course, flies right out in the morning, but that’s fine. We just had to move her out of the garage because, in winter, it’s too cold for her to stay in there. Plus, we have pipes above the garage that would freeze if we left the door open for her. So she has been a big girl. She does complain, but I am very proud of her. I love that little stinker of a chicken.

The chickens are making great progress on the pumpkin. I didn’t get a picture tonight, but they finally made it through the center. This picture is from last night though. It was dark before I could get out there to take a picture, but I loved how spooky the pumpkin looked with the flashlight on it. I am going to love putting a candle in this thing and showing all of our neighbor kids on Halloween that this is the pumpkin my chickens carved. That’s going to make my night!

The Great Chicken Pumpkin Carving Challenge

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

Day 162 of 365

Ron makes fun of me when I do my best to follow social media trends with my chickens, but I don’t let that stop me. If I like something, I’m going to do it. And the chicken pumpkin carving thing going around social media seems like a great idea to me because a) it’s adorable and b) pumpkin is a natural worm preventative for chickens. Please note it is not an official de-wormer; it just helps prevent overloads. That’s probably a lot of information for those who are not chicken people.

Anyway, I read through other posts to see what you had to do. You just get it started, let your chickens work their magic, and you end up with a monstrously carved pumpkin–handmade (well, beak made) by chickens.

I got a fantastically giant pumpkin at a local grocery store the sells local farm food, and this morning, I made my cuts. You have to get the chickens going in the right direction, of course. While I was making these cuts, Ruby hollered at me the whole time. I was in the spot where I always cut up watermelon before everyone gets a watermelon treat, and I think she was upset I was not cutting up watermelon. I threw her a little chunk of pumpkin. She continued to holler at me while the rest of the flock, being the good chickens they are, watched from the other side of the fence.

I put the seeds in the eyes, took some pictures, and left. Mostly, all the chickens seems a little suspicious of this giant pumpkin. Later, I got a message from a friend who writes for the local newspaper. She wanted to know if I would make a video of my chickens in action for an article she’s writing about the great chicken pumpkin carving challenge. I told her I would do my best.

When I got home tonight from a long afternoon of being cello mom, I took a flashlight out to the chicken pasture to see what they had done. They did some pretty good work today. I’ll have to share pictures and keep you posted. Let’s see what our flock can do.

The Exhausted Parents’ Guide to Roasting Pumpkin Seeds

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

by Heidi Skurat Harris, guest blogger

Every year, I take my son to pick a pumpkin at a local church fundraiser. He uses two criteria for selection:

  1. The pumpkin must be perfectly round and unblemished.
  2. The pumpkin must be perfectly clean.

As anyone familiar with pumpkins knows, those criteria make the perfect pumpkin as common as the Great Pumpkin.

This October 16th, 2021, we found the perfect pumpkin in about 20 minutes. In truth, we found it in the first 5 minutes, but we had to look at all of the rest of the pumpkins (and some twice) before my son could, with confidence, select said pumpkin. I tried to convince him to pick a lumpy, gnarly pumpkin that looked really cool, but apparently because I’m in my mid-40s, I don’t actually know what “cool” means.

(I mention the date because I would like credit for taking the boy pumpkin hunting a full two-weeks before Halloween while there were still a lot of pumpkins to choose from, which almost never happens.)

For the remainder of this blog, I will call the perfect pumpkin Phyllis and my son Darby.

Darby clocks in right at the 25th percentile for height and weight on the pediatrician chart. He can still fit into some 4T clothes and has trouble meeting the height requirements on fair rides.

He’s a little guy.

Phyllis, on the other hand, would clock in at 75th percentile for weight and height at the gourd doctor. If she were a cat, she’d be a chonk. If she were a Starbucks drink, she’d be a trenta–a full 31 oz. of pumpkin spice love. 

She’s a hefty girl.

I paid by circumference, so by my estimates, Phyllis was approximately $10 more expensive than a grocery store pumpkin with similar qualities. But I shop local.

Phyllis and her favorite reading material–photo courtesy Heidi Skurat Harris

Pumpkin carving is an activity that  parents both cherish and dread. It’s the fall version of egg dyeing at Easter–fun in theory but the clean up makes you thankful that you don’t have to do it again for another year. My kids pester me to do it for about two weeks leading up to the event and then lose interest about 2 minutes into the work because “This is hard!” and “I HAVE PUMPKIN ON MY HANDS! GET IT OFF RIGHT NOW BEFORE IT DESTROYS ME!!!”

The first step in our pumpkin transformation is scooping out the guts. Unlike human guts, Phyllis’s guts are delicious (unless you’re a zombie, and then the former are more satisfying).

While Darby is slashing at Phyllis (supervised, of course), I bake Phyllis’s delicious innards, in particular, her little pumpkin children. My favorite part of Halloween is not dressing up or handing out candy. My favorite part is roasting pumpkin seeds. I have often thought about buying 12 pumpkins just to get the seeds, but the carving…

Here’s how I roast pumpkin seeds. It’s not an old family recipe that reminds me of my grandma Hattie’s house and her checkered apron. You’d probably get about a dozen better recipes just by Googling “roasting pumpkin seeds.” But it works for me and probably will for you as well.

Recipe for Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

1. Rinse all the pumpkin intestines off of the seeds in cold water. Like dealing with your Uncle Bob at Thanksgiving dinner while he tells the same story he told last year, seed rinsing takes time and patience. And just as you won’t be able to stop Bob before he gets to the dicey part of his story, you won’t get the seeds fully clean, and, in either case, it really doesn’t matter.

(At this point, you can brine them with salt and water at a boil for 10 minutes, or you can just be lazy like me and skip this step.)

2. Dry the seeds.

3. Season the seeds. Because I am, according to my children “basic,” I use olive oil and salt. You can get fancy, though, and use paprika, black pepper, cumin, garam masala, rosemary, thyme, pumpkin spice, or cinnamon.

For a lower sodium version, you can season them with the tears of your children when their Phyllis-o-lantern doesn’t turn out exactly like the photo on the pumpkin carving instructions.

4. Bake the seeds. I always forget what temperature and what time to bake them for, and every year I promise to write it down and don’t. I have a gas oven, and I bake them slowly at low heat (300 until they’re crispy, flipping once). You know your oven better than I do. So set some heat and watch them until they are done, which will be at least 20 minutes.

5. Let the seeds cool.

6. Store the roasted seeds in a bowl with a tight lid on a high shelf so your kids won’t sniff them out and eat them all in 10 minutes.

My roasted pumpkin seeds are best served with pumpkin ale or spiced cider or a glass of white wine or red wine or, let’s face it, pretty much any beverage that makes you feel better about scraping pumpkin innards off your ceiling fan.

Enjoy!