Pumpkins for All: Part 2

By: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter

In part one I showed the three varieties of pumpkins we grew this year at the Lippitt Farmstead. In addition to making a wonderful pie ingredient, pumpkin is also a great food for our farm animals. To make it easier for them to eat, it is first chopped into bite-sized pieces. 

I offered the freshly chopped pumpkins to several of our animals at Lippitt Farmstead and got mixed results. The pigs of course ate them, but then, they will eat anything!

The turkeys were skeptical...

...the geese gave it a try...

...but in the end they were not interested.


The chickens, however, loved it!

Ollie, our Southdown sheep, remembered eating pumpkin in the past and dug right in.

The rest of the sheep were not impressed, but I have been feeding them pumpkin sprinkled with grain for several days and now they eat it right up. Animals tend to be neophobic and often hesitate to try new foods, but once they sample it with no bad results they are happy to add it to the menu.


Last but not least, Seraphina is a huge fan of pumpkin.

Of course this is only appropriate since you may recall from an earlier blog post, her namesake was also fond of pumpkin!

Pumpkins for All: Part 1

By: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter

We grew three varieties of pumpkins on the Lippitt Farmstead this past summer. The New England Pie Pumpkin is an adorable small pumpkin, generally between five and eight pounds. This pumpkin is my personal favorite. 

It has a wonderful sweet flesh that is excellent for pies.

The Long Island Cheese Pumpkin is a larger, buff-colored pumpkin also excellent for pies. 

Although it has a pale outer skin, the flesh inside is a deep orange color. 

This pumpkin has a wonderful aroma when we cut it open. Shari, interpreter in the More House, made these beautiful pies with it, and I can attest that they were delicious!

This recipe is from The Frugal Housewife by Lydia Maria Francis Child, published in 1830.

These pumpkins will keep in a cool place for a few months but not necessarily until late winter or early spring, so some of the pumpkin is dehydrated for future use. One way to do that is to slice the flesh and hang the slices in the kitchen where they will dry from the warmth of the fire. Another way is to stew the pumpkin, then spread it on a pan and leave the pan in a warm oven until the pumpkin becomes leathery and can be lifted off the pan in one piece. Pat, our interpreter in the Lippitt Farmhouse, has been preparing much of our pumpkin this way.


The third pumpkin we grew was the Connecticut Field Pumpkin.

This is the type of pumpkin typically grown nowadays for Halloween. It is a large, nicely-shaped pumpkin, perfect for a jack-o-lantern. While it can be used for cooking, it is rather plain tasting and somewhat watery.

Its real claim to fame is as an animal feed. In part two of this blog post, I'll report the result of my farm animal survey regarding the eating of pumpkin.

Pumpkin Regatta 2010

By: Kajsa Sabatke, Manager of Public Programs & Tobi Voigt, Manager of Statewide Programs

Did you know that 500-pound pumpkins can be hollowed out and paddled like kayaks? This year The Farmers’ Museum sponsored Pumpkin Fest in Cooperstown. The event included a weigh-off on Saturday (this year the winning pumpkin weighed over 1,500 pounds!) and a regatta on Sunday.

Here are a few pictures of the giant pumpkins on Saturday -- lined up in the Doubleday Field parking lot.  Below, one of the giant gourds is being lifted onto the scale.

The following day is the Regatta.

We arrived at Otsego Lake at 8:00 in the brisk morning and chose our pumpkin from a group of 12 sitting on pallets by the boat launch. We picked Ned Sandercock’s 549.5-pound pumpkin for its hydrodynamic shape and quickly got to work cleaning out the insides. We used garden trowels, kitchen gloves, and even our bare hands. After consulting with Ned, we decided to shave off even more from inside the pumpkin with a curry comb made for horse combing. We learned that the thinner the walls, the more buoyant the pumpkin!

Since the museum is hosting Tractor Fest in a couple of weeks, we decided to decorate the pumpkin as our gold 1953 Ford tractor. We made wheels out of poster board and sprayed the entire pumpkin with metallic gold spray paint that quickly became the envy of the other pumpkins. We also drew on a grill and a basic outline of a tractor (you can judge the likeness for yourself, but keep in mind that pumpkins aren’t particularly tractor-shaped).

 And what better as a tractor-driving paddler than a Holstein cow? Tobi, our fearless (OK, maybe a little fearful) racer, donned a cow costume for the morning. It made her very popular with the under-5 crowd at the event.

After a long wait, it was finally Tobi’s turn to ride the pumpkin (via a forklift) into the lake! The paddlers lined up, waited for signal, and then paddled furiously along the lake shore to a turnaround point, then back to the finish line. Three casualties of tipped pumpkins occurred, but Tobi managed to survive the course without getting wet, other than a little splashing. Success!! We’ve put up a video of the day on our YouTube channel. To see more results from Pumpkin Fest, check out the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce website.

Pumpkin Fest was attended by hundreds of people who lined up along the lake to cheer on the racers. The museum also had a booth in the activities tent for scarecrow making. We had a great time at the festival this year and we’ll be back for another run at the regatta in 2011!