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I’ve grown another dilly of a giant pumpkin! I’d have you guess his weight. He is an Atlantic Giant – son of Dilly, so Junior is his name! (see image above)

He’s not a Jack-o-Lantern shape, more rotund about the waist. But he’ll sit up proud if you would like to carve his face. He’s not for making pie; I imagine his guts are nothing but string inside.

(Dilly Sr.)

If you’re a wanting pie, there are plenty of pumpkin pie-sized fruits around. Like Owlett’s Store and Keeney’s Farm down Middlebury Center way and Butler’s Deli has some too or, come on over this way to Leister’s Sunny Acre’s on the way to Morris. Don’t forget about the little tykes patch at Rockberry Farm on Dartt Settlement Road. By far, though, the biggest pumpkin patch around is over to Kucharski’s dairy farm along the way to Roaring Branch.

As for Dilly Jr., two of us can’t lift him, up from off the ground. I think it might take four of you to guess his weight this time. His color is so pretty, a mango-melon shade. Except this year, he’s wearing grass stained jeans across his bottom place. If you want one a deeper orange, I’ve one or two that shade. But most of mine are kinda like an orange cream soda shake. So come on out, he’s just a sittin’ here in the yard, waiting for you to stop and guess this time. Or buy him (please!) and have a good old time with friend and folk who want to guess his weight. Kept inside he’ll easily stick around till the ides of March!

So how’d I grow his son this year?

I left ol’ Dilly at ‘Wellsboro Auto’ back in October of last year. Cheryl was nice enough to give him back to me, around about New Year. So I hauled him into the cellar and there he sat till Spring when one day I smelled an ‘Odor’ – he’d finally rotted out you see. From his gut’s I took a bunch of Dilly junior seeds. What a DADDY-MOM, a million seed’s it seemed!

I dried them on a baking dish then waited until May when I planted them in yogurt cups and set them out upon the wall and watched with baited breathe. One day it happened! Little baby Dilly plants were looking back at me. I planted them with care. Three to a mound of heaping steaming dung (we’d scraped the barn you see). This year with all the rain I just let them grow and grow, but normally you’d just leave one per plant to ensure it gets as big as it can go. Boy, I tell ya, though, the pollinator’s sure appreciated all those yellow sticky pollen stems. By the end of summer, two dozen giant orange globes I’d grown.

But curse those rotten sticky slugs and all those brown marmorated stinky bugs! Chewed right on through the rind on some! Lucky for us, pumpkin plants will heal almost overnight. The photos show the shape of them. The smaller ones weigh twenty pounds so the Biddison’s told me. The zucchini-crossed, egg shaped one I left at Leister’s store. It has to weigh at least a hundred lbs. or more.

It’s October now, so don’t forget to decorate your best this year. Please do carve a pumpkin or two; it’s so much fun and simple too. Or a turnip if you so choose.

Did you know that the original Jack-O-Lantern was not a pumpkin at all? No, it was a giant Irish turnip with a hole drilled in its head. Try finding one of those instead! A candle set down inside to light the dark of night as traveler’s went to and fro – some Irish bloke, as a joke, carved a face to direct the light ahead.

The Indian’s were the ones who had the pumpkins before we ever came across the sea. They knew the best way to eat a pumpkin was to stuff it with sweetness and bake it in the ground.

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Melissa Bravo of Meadow Lake Farm Consulting Services is a certified crop advisor, livestock, and land management consultant and free-lance agriculture writer. Melissa lives and farms in Tioga County. She can be reached at 814-574-4067.