I don’t know about you, but my pumpkins this year were HUGE! And there were lots of them. Unfortunately, we started to get early frosts and the wildlife decided they wanted a pre-winter snack! So, what to do with all these pumpkins? There’s only so many jack-o-lanterns that I can carve before my hands fall off. 😊 We did the usual… carved a pumpkin for each family member, but I still had 15 very large pumpkins and 4 pie pumpkins left. With all this pumpkin, I needed a plan of attack!
To start off easy, I processed the pie pumpkins for future use as pies and bars. No problem… easy peasy… I cut them in half, scooped out the guts, covered each half with tin foil and roasted them in the oven for 1 hour at 325 degrees. After that, I scooped out the cooked pumpkin, put it in a large bowl and pureed it with my immersion blender. Next, I transferred the puree to freezer bags in the amount needed for double batches of pumpkin pie, pumpkin bars and for mixing with my dog’s food (she absolutely LOVES pumpkin). The remaining guts and seeds went to the chickens for a quick snack. Done…. Now onto the next challenge…. 15 very large pumpkins.
Since these big pumpkins wouldn’t make good candidates for pies and bars, they needed a different plan. One that didn’t simply entail being thrown out in my compost pile, which seemed like such a waste. They deserved a fate better than that! But what to do? I decided that I should feed the wildlife with these pumpkins. This way, the wildlife wouldn’t find their way into my garden and compost area… causing me more problems in the future when they realize there’s a buffet waiting there for them. We’ve got several wildlife that visit our farm; deer, coyotes, wolves, skunk, raccoon, possum, turkeys and a family of black bears. We’ve found that by feeding them at the far end of our property we can keep them away from the house and out of my garden. There have been many times I’ve caught wildlife having a snack in the garden, eating hay in the fields with the horses and trying to snack on our chickens. But since we’ve started occasionally feeding scraps to the wildlife, far from the house, our number of visitors has declined nicely.
To start, I cut the pumpkins in half; stem to bottom. I decided to scoop out the guts and give the guts to the chicken and keep the seeds for roasting. Next, I put feed corn in the shells and placed them at the far end of our property by our trail cameras. We’ve caught a deer, turkeys and coons eating out of the “pumpkin buckets” … and a few times caught the wildlife trying to drag the shells with them. I even used the pumpkin shells as a feed bucket for the chickens inside the coop. These pumpkins were large enough that it keeps the bedding from getting into the insides of the pumpkin and mixing with the kitchen scraps.
Since the pumpkin shells found a new path in life, I needed to devise a plan for all the guts. I couldn’t just feed them all to the chickens right off the bat…. I’d be dealing with crazy digestive issues if I did. Instead, I simply packaged up portions of the guts into “single serving bags” and froze them. This way, when I make my special “kitchen scrap and oatmeal” slop for the chickens in the winter, I’ll have some nice pumpkin guts to go along with it. The chickens love my warm “kitchen scrap and oatmeal” slop, especially on those very cold (-10 degree or more) nights and days.
And lastly, there were the seeds. I kept a few of the seeds in the “single serving bags” for the chickens, but there were so many I wanted to try something else. The first thing I did was clean all the seeds by placing them in warm water to remove any excess pumpkin guts and slime. Next, I laid them out on dish towels on the kitchen table to dry. Once dry, I selected the best seeds to use for next years garden, which saves me money!
And who doesn’t like to save a few bucks here and there. The best part is… I know these pumpkins grew extremely well in our garden, even with my lack of attention to their needs! The remaining pumpkin seeds were broken up into three groups for roasting. I decided I would make regular salted pumpkin seeds, ranch pumpkin seeds and dill pickle pumpkin seeds (my farm boy has a thing for everything dill pickle flavored right now).
All in all, I was able to give new life to many pumpkins… recycled their contents… and didn’t have to waste them in my compost. Our family, our farm and the neighboring wildlife all benefited from the repurposing of our pumpkins…. And I’m sure a few neighbors will realize the benefits too during the holiday season when a few sheets of pumpkin bars and pies show up on their doorstep!