I didn't read the fine print....

I don't remember signing up for this......

.... but maybe I didn't read the FINE print.....

I, Stephanie, take you, Steve, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, and to spend unlimited hours working in the pumpkin patch, even scraping tiny bug eggs off the underside of each little leaf, until death do us part....


After careful review of my wedding vows, I finally realize what I have signed up for by marrying this farmer....It WAS in the fine print!  So now, I am spending my evenings looking for itty bitty bug eggs like this...

These are eggs from the squash bug.

And this is the squash bug himself...

And this is the squashed squash bug.... I seriously get a lot of pleasure from mashing these evil things.

We planted our pumpkins at the end of May.  We almost doubled our pumpkin patch since we had done SO well last year.  It was either beginner's luck or ignorance... or a little of both.  This year things started off well -- those tiny pumpkin leaves burst through the ground after just a few days, and we were so excited!....
But after a week or so, we realized they were not healthy-looking.  Steve did a little investigating work and discovered that our pumpkin patch was being eaten by bugs!  The next step was to do some research.  After some "Googling" we identified TWO problem bugs... the cucumber beetle, and the squash bug.

This is the cucumber beetle.  This one was already dead (a victim of the insecticide) when I snapped his photo.  These little guys can cause serious damage to the pumpkin patch as they deposit their larvae in the stem, causing a condition called bacterial wilt.

This is (we think) bacterial wilt.  After further research, we sprayed the leaves with the recommended insecticide, which promptly killed the cucumber bugs... but we are left with the devastating after-effects as seen above.  We aren't certain if our poor pumpkin vines will come out of it.  Many of the vines appear to have stunted growth.

Then we have the problem of the squash bugs as mentioned before.  The squash bugs apparently hibernate in the leftover debris from a pumpkin patch.  We had a healthy harvest last year, yet we didn't realize that the pumpkins more than likely attracted squash bugs late in the summer.  They ate their fill and then they hibernated in the debris that we unwittingly left behind for them (Now we know we should have destroyed the   debris by burning completely all the old vines and rotted pumpkins).  In the spring, the squash bugs come out of hibernation and lay their eggs on the backs of hundreds of pumpkin leaves as seen here.....

The only way to effectively get rid of these squash bugs is to spray the adults with insecticide and then destroy every little egg.  (The insecticide doesn't work on the eggs --).  So, guess who has been picking itty bitty squash eggs off pumpkin leaves and putting them in a bucket?!

They come off quite easily if you do it correctly.  Just what is the correct way to take squash bug eggs off pumpkin leaves?... well, you kind of have to roll them to the ends of the leaves and then pinch them in your fingers.

Then you drop them in a bucket.  Then you have to be VERY careful not to kick the bucket over and spill your itty bitty eggs... like this...

Yes... I really did do that.  (Did you ever have that feeling that you should just shoot yourself in the foot?)  I chose to not pick up every single one of these, but instead I mashed them repeatedly with a rock.  I actually documented this with a picture....

Pathetic...

So anyway... I spent 3 1/2 hours this evening and about 2 hours yesterday evening picking eggs of pumpkin leaves... checking the underneath of every single pumpkin leaf... one... by.... one...

And all the while I was thinking... $3.00 / per pumpkin?  And I was trying to think of cool, original, thought-provoking quotes to write here in my blog.... like "no one ever becomes an expert on his first try."  (I just made that up, but I'm sure plenty of people have said inspiring things such as that at times such as these).

Here's another quote... Ladies, before you marry a farmer, READ THE FINE PRINT!"