Journal entry – 15-19 October 2015, Thurs-Mon – Gilbert, AZ – Running the pumpkin lot

Journal entries are just that – the digital copy of my hand-written entries in my journal. If you aren’t interested in the daily details of our adventure, feel free to skip on to the next “regular” post.

People trickle in throughout the days and we sell pumpkins in groups of 1-5 or so. A dust storm on Thursday has us buttoning down hatches. We have to undecorate the awning 🙁 to close it. With the wind we re-set up our decorations at least 6 times over a couple of hours.

  

Thursday evening I catch Andy, the maintenance man, over at the church. He remembers a hookup last year and shows me the spigot. I get hoses stretched out and refill our tank before hooking up. Horray, water!

Friday, Mike and Mel arrive with old carpets from apartments. We put two under our awning to help with dust. They approve my PVC layout and suggest getting an additional drinking water hose.

It rains Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The carpet may never be dry. The hose I pick up is too short, so I have to redesign the PVC and then old connections crack. It takes 3 days and half a dozen trips to Lowes/Home Depot for me to finally get water run. We eventually have water hooked up to the RV and throughout our lot. There are three hose connections that we can use to spray off the trees when we switch seasons.

  

Sales seem fairly steady. Apparently it’s a mad rush at the end, so on the 30-31st we will actually go through our stock. Another load to fill out our stash is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday.

One woman picks up a pumpkin and comes back the next day with it hollowed out for a photo shoot with her baby. He fits inside perfectly.

   
    

Another woman picked up a large pumpkin and some tiny ones to use for a pregnancy announcement. She plans to cut open the big one and carve a heart in it then out the small one inside it. Fun!

We have three generators of different sizes. The largest has an electric start, but the battery is dead and won’t take a charge. I have to run a generator and hook up my battery charger in order to start it.

  

I run all the errands – between my bike rack and the motorcycle I can carry things more easily than Ashley could in a backpack. She’s ready to get out and about with a purpose, not just aimlessly wandering on her bicycle.

We do a quick fitness test and are sore for 2 days.

With pumpkins to throw away daily – unsellable due to bad spots, we carve jack-o-lanterns, roast seeds and plan on trying lots of different recipes. Pumpkin smoothies, pumpkin pancakes, soup, blackbean and pumpkin chili, etc. Plenty of raw material, it seems a shame not to experiment when we so readily have the chance!