Bees and A Be-Headings!!!!

 Now I know you are wondering about the above illustration, but first let me give some major props to our local Bees......

I'd never given Bees that much thought until I needed them... I was told that when our pumpkin flowers started blooming, that we needed the bees to show up and help pollinate everything.

 How would the bees know where to come?? How would they find out about our hidden little pumpkin patch in the woods?? It's not like I could hang a sign to let them know where to fly over and get to work at?

But they did show up and they keep showing up. Mother Nature is pretty amazing. (Holly DeJean would love this!!! Buzzzzzzzzzz)

So the bees worked like little Trojans and we had our first sign of pumpkins 

on the morning of July 1st.

We were all so excited... Phoebe even ran outside in her nightgown to check this out!! 

Now, just 8 days later and some of these guys are getting BIG! We may be celebrating Halloween in August!!!

We have been sticking plates under them as they appear to help them to not rot. They call this pair  "Brother and Sister" :)

   And then we had this one very very bad pumpkin who tried to break out.......

He was like an overweight prisoner who got stuck in the barbed wire during the great escape. The weak link of the gang...

Let me just tell you..Brent Compton doesn't play.... He has a ZERO tolerance for run-a-ways

So What did he do???

Brent cut him in two pieces to make an example out of him for all the other pumpkins to see....!!! 

He literally just left the two pieces on the ground for all to stare at every day.

The whole crop has been scared to death since then.....haven't heard a single peep out of any of them since that dreadful morning.

We also had a little box turtle show up that Phoebe named "Phalene"

She wanted the little turtle to have a "Ph" name like her!!! We all acted like we had never seen a pumpkin before (LOL).... Yes- that is Phoebe kissing it....  Even LeRoy was amazed!! 

We played with it one evening and then we never saw her again. 

She must of heard about the be-heading....

Honestly though, It hasn't been all Urban Farmer Utopia though. I have a tendency to get stressed about these pumpkins. I think mainly because we don't have a clue!!  I am an art teacher... Brent is a Window and Door guy. But we have enjoyed experiencing all of these new little adventures with our kids. I plan to print these blogs into a book for them to have one day.

At one point,  I thought we had that dreaded powdery mildew infesting our crop. I was so stressed. We read up on it and learned that a mix of Milk and Water sprayed on the leaves would help get rid of the fungus the organic way.

I ran over to the neighborhood Walmart to grab some cheap milk and got to spraying. It has seemed to help.

Here is the milk being sprayed on everything.

 I also put out the rest of the fertilizer that we were suppose to "side dress" the plants with

and managed to burn up a few leaves!!!!

I felt terrible about it. 

Like pouring battery acid on someones face. OUCH!!!

We also had a chicken snake show up (no pics of it), but Brent let him live. There have been zero signs of Peter Rabbit so I'm wondering if the Chicken Snake took care of that issue. Brent swears on our marriage that he didn't sneak out and kill it. Would you believe him??

Now, we don't want to put the Jack-O-Lantern before the Pumpkin, BUT, we did meet with a man on clearing some more land so the patch could expand a little... 

To Be Continued