So, I’ve been picking pumpkins.

Well, that’s kind of an understatement — I’ve been attempting to gather and process pumpkins quickly enough to actually make a dent in the sheer number of them. It takes about an hour to cut and bake two of them, then I need to let them cool, then puree and freeze them. Each pumpkin seems to yield a little over 16 ounces of puree. That’s enough for either one pie, one batch of pumpkin cream sauce, or one pot of pumpkin soup.

In other words, this is basically a replay of when my spouse and I went strawberry picking. This last time, we sprung for the big cardboard flat. I still have a whole loaf of strawberry bread in the freezer, two gallon bags of whole berries, and two trays of frozen strawberry puree.

I’m either going to run out of space in the freezer for pureed pumpkin, or be completely sick of pumpkin and pumpkin-adjacent things by the time October rolls around.

Fortunately, pumpkin seems to keep well. Once it’s turned to pumpkin mush, I pack it into a one cup Souper Cube tray and freeze it. After it’s frozen, I can pop it out and stick it in a reusable freezer bag. I wish I had a chest freezer (but I also know that I’d just fill it up with nonsense if I did).

In the meantime, I’m amassing pumpkin recipes. So far, I’m looking at egg- and dairy-free pumpkin pie, pumpkin cream sauce, and pumpkin bread with chocolate chunks. I hope everything turns out well, but I’m also slightly concerned that I’ll end up having to sneak around and drop off piles of excess pies and breads on my neighbors’ porches in the middle of the night.

I didn’t even plant these pumpkins. I’ve watered them maybe twice ever. I have the feeling they wouldn’t be nearly this prolific if I’d actually put effort into them.