I love Autumn! The coolness, the colors, the tastes … everything seems to just merge into a great sensory embrace.  This Autumn is no different, but the season brought me a present that I simply had not expected. 

A while back, I shared the work John and I had done that laid out our philosophy for the farm and the Sanctuary.  Because we both believe that the “Rescue and Recovery” part of our mission encompasses more than our Sanctuary residents, most of our farm work revolves around recovering the natural ecosystems and their life cycles as much as we can on our ten acres.  We’ve planted over 20 trees, and three little beautiful pine trees have survived, along with our oaks, our hazelnuts, our new orchard trees, and one little Japanese Maple that is my Mother’s Day tree. We didn’t get the bees set up this year  (maybe next year!), but John’s beautiful flower gardens brought us many marvelous butterflies that flew around the flowers all summer long. And in the back of the big barn ~ the one that you’ve seen on many newsletters ~ grew this:

That picture was from July. This one is from late August:

And this picture is from our harvest adventure in late September:

The picture at the top of this blog is the harvest ~ the first harvest. We’ve many more to pick. I’ve never grown a pumpkin patch ~ ever. I’ve been gardening for over thirty years, and I’ve never even planted a pumpkin seed. And do you know what? I didn’t plant this one, either. Cricket did, albeit inadvertently.

When Cricket, Mary and Bella first arrived, I was told that sheep love pumpkins  ~ and watermelons, graham crackers, and Fig Newtons.  As it turns out, our sheep don’t, but Cricket does love pumpkin seeds. So, last Fall, I fed him raw pumpkin seeds from the pie pumpkins I cooked up. Nature did her thing, and I shoveled soiled pine shavings into the compost pile behind the big barn all last Fall and Winter long.  In the Spring, I saw the first small leaves of what turned into this huge, beautiful pumpkin patch! The circle of life ~ I love it! 

Now, we have enough pumpkins for our own use as well as several other family’s use. I don’t have any idea if this will ever happen again, but I’m  definitely feeding Cricket pumpkin seeds again this Fall ~ and for next Spring, I’m thinking of planting some other seeds in this winter’s compost pile! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Happy Harvest!  Tracy