1. Bring it to Stittsville’s 3rd annual Pumpkin Parade of course! Organizer Trevor Eggleton is expecting to have hundreds of creative jack-o-lanterns on display at Village Square Park from 6:00pm-7:30pm. Enter your own masterpiece to win a prize in one of three categories (child, teen and adult), or just come to marvel at all the creative designs. Includes prizes from Tracy’s Art Studio, Pottery Playhouse, the Ottawa Senators’, Brown’s Your Independent Grocer, Saoirse Esthetics, The Glen Pub, and Covered Bridge Brewing, plus free hot chocolate and a visit from Mayor Watson. Best of all, there will be compost bins on site so you won’t have to take your pumpkin home with you.
2. Feed it to the chickens. Rebecca Handbridge lives near Stittsville and uses pumpkins – whole or carved – as a supplement for her flock of chickens. She’ll pick up whole or carved pumpkins, as well as compostable straw and ha bales that you may have left over from your Halloween decor. She has 80 laying hens and says that she goes through a lot of pumpkins in the winter.
UPDATE: Handbridge says she’s been inundated with requests for pumpkin pick-ups from all over Ottawa. If you’d like to help feed her chickens, you can drop them off at the gate at 6619 Franktown Road.
3. Launch your pumpkin from a giant slingshot. For $5/pumpkin ($20 for 5 pumpkins) you can launch your gourd to raise money for the Ottawa Chapter of Cystic Fibrosis Canada. It happens from 10am-2pm at 5740 Old Richmond Road near Fallowfield. More info here.
4. Compost it. You can put your jack-o-lantern out with green bin on garbage day.
Those chickens look positively evil. I have visions of people lining up delivering pumpkins in the trunks of their car, leaving it open while these chickens aggressively peck the hell out it while you wait… lol