We had a pretty good pumpkin harvest for the 2010 season. I planted heirloom sugar pumpkins and ended up with~20. Unfortunately, I lost quite a few of them after they were hit with frost. I didn’t cover the pumpkins and many came out of the frost rotten.
Before I lost my few surviving pumpkins I decided it was time to do something with them. I started with 7 pumpkins (1 came from my parent’s garden)
I washed the pumpkins and began the long process of peeling, gutting and cutting. I ended the process with a blister and a nice cut on my thumb. Pumkins are not the easiest thing to cut!
I cut the pumpkin in half and removed the seeds. I didn’t have enough time to separate and dry the seeds so the chickens got a nice treat.
Next up I sliced the pumpkin into manageable pieces and began to peel.
After peeling I diced the pumpkin into 1 inch cubes and brought the pieces to a boil for 2 minutes in plain water.
There were LOTS of pumpkin cubes!
I processed the pumpkin in quart jars with 1 inch headspace, at 11 pounds pressure for 90 minutes.
The seven pumpkins I canned produced 14 quart jars and a bit more puree that I added to apple sauce and froze. To use the canned pumpkin I just have to drain the water and puree. I am envisioning many pumpkin muffins, cakes, pies and breads in our future… 
**Please note pumpkin can only be canned safely in chunks, in a pressure canner please refer to a trusted canning resource for detailed instructions prior to canning pumpkin!
I thought that was interesting and scary at the same time… I don’t know much about canning other than I stick to the easy, safe things. I wonder how the large corporations can the pureed kind? Do they add weird stuff or is it just that they have hard core equipment to make it safe?
From what I’ve learned, large corporations have equipment that can heat the puree to a higher temperature to ensure that the puree is heated all the way through at a temperature high enough to kill botulism spores. A home canner cannot reach that temperature (I think its 240* vs. 250*). By leaving pumpkin in chunks rather than pureeing, you allow the water around the chunks in the can to heat the chunk all the way through at a high enough temperature. The pumpkin puree is much denser than the water/chunk combination.
I love that you can your own pumpkin. What a treat that will be through the winter. I imagine you’d be able to make pumpkin butter with the pumpkin chunks too…yum.
I usually just puree mine and freeze it. I love the fresh/homegrown pumpkin compared to purchased!