Pumpkins

Our entire pumpkin harvest. All the how-tos say to leave them on the vine to ripen, but the vines were nearly dead, and with all the rain we've been having, the slugs were moving in. These are small, even for pie pumpkins, but the paper tells me the commercial growers didn't do too well this year either. Since they've at least started to change color and the stems have hardened, I think there's a good chance they'll color up a bit more. The instructional blogs all say that sunshine is the key to ripening, but I think heat is more an issue, as the mostly-green ones were green where they were exposed to such sunlight as made it through the overcast, but yellow or orange where they touched the presumably warmer ground. Anyway, they're now on a card table in the back bedroom, which is the coolest part of the house but much warmer than outside. I'm hoping we'll get enough pumpkin puree for pies, pumpkin bread, etc.