A friend called in with the most enormous pumpkin I had ever seen. One of those pumpkins people grows for competitions. It filled the back of his station wagon and we rolled it out onto the drive and pushed it into the barn where he promptly attacked it with the handsaw. My pigs were going to have pumpkin pieces for a week!
This friend of mine is poor – just like me. Money is something we don't see much of but we don't go without. We survive by sharing. Whatever we have is shared. I have a policy of whatever I grow, or am given, or "find on the side of the road" ... I will give half of it away. It's my food insurance policy and my friend works on the same principles I have. He had been given leftover competition pumpkins – those that hadn't met the required shape and size. One of them weighed nearly 110 kilos! Now that's some pumpkin.
So, off he had trotted, dealing sawed-up pumpkin to all those he knew had pigs. I asked him, with tongue in cheek, if he was having pumpkin pie for tea and he ruefully grinned, said "I wish" and informed me they were totally inedible for human tastes. He was having some pork pieces he had been given. "Sounds yum," I said, "and what will you have with it?" "Not much," he replied. Well ... a quick whip around the garden and the freezer fixed that. My pigs were happy, my friend was happy and I was happy knowing a good turn had made a good turn. Now ... who do I know that would like some ginormous pumpkin seeds?
