Flying/Swimming Pumpkins

Harvesting California Style,
 
You are not going to believe how I harvested our 11 Prizewinner and two AG pumpkins. 
 
I grow our pumpkins on a steep hill in our back yard.  The plants grow in raised beds two feet deep and the vines grow up the hillside.  To keep the pumpkins from rolling down the steep hill they have to be supported by a platform of two inch thick Styrofoam on top of concrete blocks.  The low end of the hillside ends at a 10 foot retaining wall that is above my swimming pool.  I had three friends helping me harvest the first pumpkin when one of them stepped on a vine and sent a 100 pound Prizewinner pumpkin rolling down the hill and dropping 10 feet down into the pool.  Wow, we all got a great laugh out of that and the splash was huge.  We then tried to get the 175 to 250 pound pumpkins off the hill but we did not have enough people to lower them over the high retaining wall down to the pool deck.  We then figured that if one pumpkin could survive a leap into the pool, why not try it with a bigger pumpkin.  We carried a 210 pounder to the edge of the 10 for wall and let her drop.  It went down about 7 feet deep with a huge splash and then bobbed to the top undamaged.  By this time we had a crowd of 12 ladies and children and they were all falling down they were laughing so hard.  By the time we finished we had 13 pumpkins bobbing in the pool and only two cracked.  We got most of this unusual harvest on video tape and are considering sending it in to the Americas Funniest Videos TV show.  I just thought some of you may appreciate the crazy things some of us pumpkin growers have to do to get the job done.  We are lucky we harvested when we did or the 7.0 earthquake we had the other day would have started all the pumpkins rolling down the hill.   
 
Steve
Beverly Hills, CA....Home of the flying and swimming pumpkins
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