Warning, Pumpkin Had a Bad Harvest

In my family, we love canned pumpkin. We use it to make cookies and pies. Our favorite of course is the pumpkin pie. It doesn't have to be a holiday to bake one, either. It can be an ordinary family dinner and this wonderful pie will be served.

But in the past month, we have noticed a trend we do not like. Canned pumpkin is becoming harder to find. We usually buy it at a local grocery store (Save A Lot). We get one of the bigger cans there for 79 cents. This was a great deal compared to the other stores that only offer the name branded pumpkin for $1.77 (Libby's) a can. This year the name brand was the only kind we could find. We even checked out a couple of other grocery stores (Kroger's and Wal Mart) to see if they had any off brand pumpkin (store brand). They didn't have any either.

Why? It seems all of this spring rain we got last year, coupled with the intense heat of the summer did a number on the pumpkin crop. According to the owner of the Sunshine Farms in Massachusetts (Jim Geohegan) his harvest went from the usual 70 tons last year to 12 tons. Some farmers, even had to have pumpkins shipped in during the Halloween season to make sure they had enough to sell to their customers. This fact makes me worry about this coming years crop. Here in Ohio, we have all ready seen a lot of rain and many forecasters are calling for another very hot summer.

For these reasons, my family is stocking up our canned pumpkin and when we decide to bake those pies we are only using our best recipes.

The recipes are from my mother, who is an excellent cook and baker. The pumpkin pie recipe itself isn't hard. Just buy that beloved canned pumpkin (as long as you can) add two and one half cups of milk and one cup of sugar to the mixture and bake in your pie shell. It is that easy.

My family's favorite though is a Pumpkin cream pie. The ingredients are:

1 package of vanilla pudding mix

3 tablespoons of sugar

1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice

1 can (13 oz) evaporated milk

1 egg (slightly beaten)

1 cup of canned pumpkin

Mix all the ingredients and pour into a baked 9 inched pie shell and then cool.

So, if you are a fan of pumpkin, you should always make sure you have a can or two in your pantry, just in case the crop doesn't harvest well, again this year.