Farm Bill Movement & Get Out Deadline

Farm Bill Movement & Get Out Deadline plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

The U.S. House sent the bill that combined its farm program and nutrition bills to the Senate Monday. The U.S. Senate - despite a government shutdown - has reappointed farm bill conferees and requested a conference with the House. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid late Tuesday moved to go to conference with the House on the farm bill. That action was quickly followed by a request to presiding Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia that the dozen original Senate farm bill negotiators be reappointed.

AUDIO: Under the previous order the chair appoints the following conferees on the part of the Senate. Senator Stabenow, Leahy, Harkin, Baucus, Brown, Klobuchar, Bennet, Cochran, Chambliss, Roberts, Boozman and Hoeven.

So you were taking a little vacation and decided to camp out in one of our beautiful national parks for a week. Then the government decided to shut down and all the parks with it. Now what. Hundreds of tourists staying in landmark US national parks like Yosemite and the Grand Canyon face a deadline Thursday to leave due to the shutdown. Some 401 sites were closed but many people were already staying in hotels, cabins and campgrounds. The deadline to vacate is now 3pm Pacific.

Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray.

Pumpkins, pumpkins, everywhere you look now there are pumpkins. Whether you use them for fall decorating, or to ward off spooky creatures in celebration of Halloween, there seems to be an abundance of pumpkins to choose from this year. If you're like me, you may have wondered with all the pumpkin carving over the years if Jack-O-Lantern type pumpkins can also be used to make pumpkin pie. The answer would be yes, they can. Any pumpkin can actually be used to make pie. Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins' texture is different from pumpkins raised strictly as pie pumpkins, but it can still be done. Word of warning though, you do not want to use a pumpkin that has been carved and setting out for several hours as pumpkin pie material; you don't even want to know the amount of bacteria and mold that would have started to set in by that time. Since I have now given you an early Halloween scare, I'll make this suggestion - save the carving pumpkins for carving, and buy the smaller, sweeter pie pumpkins for baking. Remember though, there is an eating treat that carving pumpkins can supply, and that's plenty of seeds for roasting.

Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.