The Great Jollity Giant Pumpkin Harvest

Every year, we grow pumpkins at Jollity Farm. It is the reason we started the front yard garden in teh first place. To grow more of our own goat food. We grow lots of comfrey, sunflowers, and pumpkins. Most years, we get a nice assortment of pumpkins to decorate the farm and eventually feed to the goats. The pumpkins store well, so the goats get a nice treat every day all winter long.

But this year? This year we grew something a little more impressive.

Meet the Jollity Giants: three of the biggest pumpkins we've ever grown.

Now, I know they're not exactly record-breaking, county-fair-winning giants. But around here, they're pretty darn impressive. And getting them out of the garden turned into a bit of an adventure.

Three Seeds, One Bucket of Compost, Three GIANTS

Here's the thing about these three sisters: they all grew on one vine, from a little experiment we decided to try this year.

We planted exactly three seeds in a single hill of soil made from one bucket load of our compost. We watered them well, thinned out the later pumpkins that tried to grow on the vine, and then did the most important part of the process:

STEP BACK.

That's it. Three seeds, a bucket of compost, some water, a little pruning, and a whole lot of patience.

And apparently, that was enough to grow the biggest pumpkins we've ever had!

Now, growing them was the easy part. Getting them out of the garden? Well, that's another story.

Meet the Three Sisters

First up was the smallest of the three sisters.

We managed to get her out of the garden without smashing any pumpkins, which seemed like a pretty good start to the whole operation.

She weighed in at 65 pounds!

And that was the smallest one.

The baby sister is sitting in front of the farm stand along with most of the other pumpkins we harvested.

With one giant successfully harvested, we turned our attention to her two bigger sisters. Surely, we thought, we'd manage to get them out, too.

Well... mostly.

The middle sister fit in the garden cart, but even with Valleri and Erin helping, we couldn't lift her out of the cart and into the truck.

So we changed plans.

Instead of lifting her, we walked her up the hill in the cart.

She's now settled into her new home by the bucks' pen, near our darling photo board. It's a pretty good spot, especially considering how much effort it took to get her there!

The middle sister and some “normal size” pumpkins. You can see she is flat on one side, well two sides, from growing up next to her sisters.

As for her weight? She's too heavy for us to weigh. My best guess is somewhere around 100 pounds. 🤔

And then there was the biggest sister.

The Biggest One Took All Three of Us

The last of the three Jollity Giants was the biggest of all.

She barely fit in the cart. And once again, the three of us couldn't lift her.

So, once again, we walked her up the hill.

It took all three of us pushing to get that cart up the hill. Let's just say this wasn't exactly a one-person pumpkin operation!

Her final resting place is near the goats, which is convenient. When the time comes to feed her to them, we won't have far to go.

I'm pretty sure the goats won't appreciate the effort that went into growing, harvesting, and hauling these pumpkins. They'll just be happy to eat them.

That's goats for you.

And That's Not All the Pumpkins

Of course, the Jollity Giants weren't the only pumpkins we harvested this year. We also brought in about half of the other pumpkins from the garden.

Those aren't quite as dramatic to move around, thankfully!

It's always fun to see what the garden produces, especially when an experiment works better than expected. We put three little seeds into a hill of our own compost, gave them water, and let nature do its thing.

And look what happened!

Will we try it again next year?

Oh, YES.

But we might make one small improvement to our experimental setup. We're thinking about putting a pallet under the pumpkin as it grows.

Because while we're perfectly happy to experiment in the garden, we ain't getting any younger!

If we can grow another giant and then lift it with the tractor instead of recruiting a three-person pumpkin-pushing team, that sounds like a pretty good plan to me.

For now, the Jollity Giants are enjoying their retirement around the farm. Eventually, they'll become goat snacks, but until then, they're a pretty impressive reminder of what a few seeds, a bucket of compost, and a little experiment can produce.

Not bad for a few pumpkins grown right here at Jollity Farm!