More Mums!

Brenkle's Fall Mums

LFLF passed by Brenkle's Farms & Greenhouses on the way home from State College on Sunday and found quite a nice selection of mums.  The mums are the way I like them ..... not all fully open & on the down hill slide!  :) 

Sunday Drivers

What a difference a day makes in October. Thursday, Friday, Saturday ..... cold, overcast, with mist & rain all day. Then Sunday came and it promised to be a perfect day for fall leaf peeping. We ended up driving north to Shelocta in Indiana County. Reegers Farm was having their annual fall pumpkin festival. Boy, has this grown in the 2 years since LFLF worked in Indiana! Reeger's is a great local spot for lunch out on the covered patio in the summer. The daily menu changes with what home grown produce is in season on the farm. They also have wonderful baked goods. There was a nice sized crowd there today to enjoy the pumpkin patch, hayrides, etc. & that's during a Steelers game!

On the trip back, we stopped at Brenkle's Farms and Greenhouse just west of Butler on Rt 68 and picked up some heirloom squash & pumpkins. They're really neat to decorate with AND cook with for something different. Today 2 young women were buying pie pumpkins when we came in. They were questioning "how many pumpkins does it take to make a pie?". Seems that one of their boyfriends wants a "real" homemade pie (and pumpkin roll!). LFLF cautioned them that a real pie won't be a perfectly smooth deep orange pie like they're used to, but it will be lighter in color & have "more texture". Told them to "Google it" ..... I wonder how that will turn out? ;~)

It looks like "Pumpkin" the cat was manning the scales. All of the big jack-o-lantern pumpkins were 19 cents/lb! That's the best buy we've seen all season, especially if you need to buy A LOT of pumpkins and you're in the area.

And yes ..... Brenkle's has a large selection of mums out front that still have "blooms opening" for sale.

Mission Accomplished (well almost ......)

Another Sunday in October and another diversion related to the Pittsburgh Steelers. This time my return trip from State College was affected, since driving in on the Parkway East pre-game would not be a good idea! So ....... I came across the area on Rt 422 W and then dropped down to Rt 68. This gave me a chance to include a stop at Brenckle's Farms & Greenhouses as I passed by. Well, I finally completed my pumpkin shopping for the season. I added 3 large pumpkins & a group of gourds to the decorative "One Too Many" pumpkin that I had purchased at the Ambridge Farmers' Market a couple of weeks ago. The pumpkin search is over for this year. I looked all over, but I really wasn't able to find good specimens (ahem) of the heirloom varieties that I like to use. The Long Island Tan Cheese were scarce and smallish this year. The Rouge Vif d' Etampes that I found were nicked & scratched and their stems were broken. The Galeux d'Eysines were completely covered with warts & no pinkish orange was showing. I understand that they must be picked before they get too mature because the warts keep growing.

Picky, picky, picky!

The end result is that this year's display will be much more "conventional". And that's not a bad thing anyway. If you're interested in looking at or trying some of these unusual pumpkin & squash varieties check out Seed Savers Exchange http://www.seedsavers.org/ and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds http://rareseeds.com/.

Since I use these for display through Thanksgiving, they tend to go soft, but they do not go to waste ....... they're fed to my sheep when we're finished with them! I even have an antique "long handled pumpkin cutter" that we use to break them up so that the sheep can bite into them.

How about these apple gourds? These aren't the little ones, they're 8 -12 inches around. I was impressed with the selection of pumpkins and home grown produce at Brenkle's. It's definitely worth a stop and the price on the pumpkins can't be beaten.