PUMPKIN CHALLENGE UPDATE: A Neighbor’s Hungry Hen Devours our Sprouts – Time to Start from Scratch!

I was really excited for Thursday to come since it would be exactly seven days since I planted my pumpkin seeds for the 2025 Pumpkin World Cup until a disaster happened. It seems that it has already ended before it even began when a hungry hen from the neighbor gobbled up all the pumpkin seeds in my pumpkin pots just this afternoon.

That big brown hen in the mango tree is the culprit. In my first update, I made DIY pumpkin pots out of banana leaves while waiting for the pumpkin seeds to arrive. The day after that, the much-awaited seeds arrived, and I immediately planted them in the said pots, hoping for a wonderful result after seven days. But this big brown hen ruined everything when it made our seedling pots its buffet. It walked up to our seedling table and pecked each pot, gunning for the pumpkin seeds. The hen was enjoying the feast when my father and I noticed it and drove it away. But it was too late, almost all of the seeds were eaten. I almost cried in my dismay.

Up close, this is the mark where the seed was taken out. There’s only one sprouting pumpkin seed left in the pot. I really wanted to cry, chase the hen, and stone it to death, but I didn’t do it. In total, I planted around 30 pumpkin seeds here since the seller gave an excess of ten seeds, but only one was left after the hen devoured all of them.

These were some of the seeds before I planted them. I planted one per pot to give them more space for germination. I was really glad looking at them after I planted all the seeds, not anticipating that a neighbor's hen was lurking around waiting for an opportune time to devour the seedlings.

Aside from my pumpkin seeds, my mother’s cucumber seedlings and bitter gourds on the same seedling table were also destroyed by the bastard hen. Some of the cucumber seedlings' stems were broken after the hen stepped on them, and the bitter gourd leaves were slightly torn. It was such a heartbreaking day for us.

So this time, I am planning to start all over again, from repurchasing pumpkin seeds from the same store, or maybe just buy at the nearby Farm Station. I’m quite hesitant about it since I’m not sure if they have the same variety as what I ordered online.

One thing’s for sure now—I’m not backing down from the pumpkin challenge! This is just the beginning, and there’s still a long road ahead before the finals. Maybe I should cook that big, brown hen first, just to make sure there are no more disasters for my poor pumpkin sprouts (lol). 🤣 Stay tuned for the next update! I’ll do my best to keep up with my fellow challengers. 💚

(I hereby attest that this article is made by me without any aid of AI or grammar editing apps and the photos attached are mine; that I fully understand and adhere to Hive policies and guidelines in posting; and that I won’t be violating any of these rules for my future posts.) Photos are mine.