Auction Highlights - 2

David led me out to the drive through area so we could check out the large lots that would be coming through.  In the spring and summer seasons, there are plenty of tractors out there, but once the big stuff - watermelons, cantaloupes, and pumpkins start coming in, there are tractors as far as the eye can see out there.

I climbed up on a couple of the trailers for a look around at all the pumpkins - while most of them have a traditional "round and orange" look to them, there was a lot of variation, even amongst the "round and orange" ones.  They varied by how the vine joined or was shaped, whether they were round or elongated, or by how many seeds they contained versus how much flesh there was, as David explained.

One tractor's load caught my eye because it had a couple of alternative types of pumpkins on it.  I was remembering one Halloween when I was a kid and we painted the pumpkins instead of carving them...my mother chose some green tempura paint to highlight the stripes on them, and I can't remember a jack-o-lantern face.  So this lot I saw was almost exactly like the one I remembered.

The last stop we made out on the lot was to have a look at this case of "lunch lady gourds" - as David called them.  These have a hard skin on them and aren't edible, or at least, there's not enough there to make that very worthwhile.  They are truly grown for their decorative appearance - and they were pretty, I'll give you that!


I think that there is enough perspective in the shot for comparison purposes.  These are not the little gourds you see at all the produce stands this time of year.  The pumpkins in the background give away the fact that these big gourds could hold their own in any harvest time tableau you might be setting up around your place.

By now, we'd had our fill of pie and pumpkins, so it was time for David to get on the road for his errands.  While he made two work stops, I had some time to get some good news on a proposal we'd won at work, and then have a bit of an adventure at stop number two.

That's where I'll pick up next post.