Winter Squash Harvest 2011

The past few weeks have been a frenzy of harvesting and putting up vegetables before the first hard frost hits. 

 We've had one light frost already!  

This week we harvested all the winter squash out of my summer and winter squash garden (the summer squash is finished).  

While this looks like a lot of winter squash, it wasn't nearly the harvest I had hoped for.  I think - no, I know - the early summer drought we had cut into yields.  I'm not complaining though.  This section of my garden was dust dry during the drought and I'm happy I pulled anything at all off it!  

We had to get out and harvest everything that was in that section of my gardens because the chickens had figured out how to get in and were having a very good time pecking at everything.  They certainly can put a hurting on some vegetables.  Look at this poor hubbard squash!    

(You can actually see the beak marks!)

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together.  For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.  ~Edwin Way Teale