Laughing Thyme Farm: Living the Dream

Our pumpkin has ripened fairly early.  From all that I’ve “heard” they are supposed to be ready in the fall so that they can cure in the cooler weather.  Well, as my luck would have it, some are ready NOW.  So….

At this very moment I have 7 quarts of cubed pumpkin “steaming” away in my pressure canner.  It’s kind of a weird day to do it, but I’ve only used our pressure canner once and that was probably 4 years ago.  I wanted Eric around to do it with me, just for my own assurance.  And since he works tomorrow, today was the day. 

We started by washing the pumpkins.  Then splitting them in half and removing the seeds, which we are drying in the oven for future roasting. (I LOVE roasted pumpkins seeds.)  Then I sliced the pumpkin into 1 in. slices, removed more pulp and removed the outer rind.  Then I cut the pumpkin slices into 1 in. “cubes”.  I must tell you that not many of them actually looked cube-ish.  But I tried my best.

From there I put them into my giant stock pot, filled it mostly full of water and boiled the “cubes” for 2 min.  Then I packed them into my quart jars with the cooking liquid.  That part I was comfortable with, albeit a little annoyed at the tediousness of it. The part I wasn’t initially comfortable with was the actual canning them in the pressure cooker.  After Eric and I going over the directions for the  together, which I miraculously found in one minute, I felt pretty comfortable about it.  The pumpkin processes for 90 minutes after the pressure cooker gauge rattles for 10 minutes. 

I will say, however, that I can’t help feeling a little anxious about the possible steam bomb on my kitchen.  Plus the persistent noise is quite annoying to me.  Noise is not my friend.  Finally, after this batch is done, I have another 5 quarts to do.  (This is after the pressure canner cools to room temp with the first batch inside.)

So, we have a little over half of the pumpkins left in the garden.  We’ll probably get a good 21-24 quarts of pumpkins by the end of the season!  At least SOMETHING is growing well in my garden.