Ghost Upon the Floor

     Welcome back, October. How I have missed you. The weather, the cool, the colors begin. The harvest, the abundance, the peak of life. Is there a better way to ring the month where autumn takes full hold, than in a pumpkin patch?

     I don't believe so. This past Sunday, a visit to Kelkenberg Farms in Akron, New York. A warm morning, a quiet farm of several acres. Fourteen dollars allows one a ticket to the corn maze and the pumpkin patch. We wandered around the farm before the horse-drawn ride out to the pumpkin patch. We saw a charming old dog blind in one eye, the chickens, the goats, the horses. We walked through rows and rows of mums, past corn stalks for sale and into a country store that smelled of candle wax and pumpkin spice.



      And then we boarded the cart. The horses take you a distance from the main farm, and out to the pumpkin patch. Having not been in such a pumpkin patch for many years, the childlike glee that filled my Halloween haunted soul was almost too much to take. Unlike many farms and places where pumpkins are sold, Kelkenberg allows you to pick any pumpkin, regardless of size. We walked amongst the rows of pumpkin vines, bright orange decaying pumpkins, perfectly shaped pumpkins, enormous pumpkins. In search of the great pumpkin, the one I would take home.



      In the end, I decided on the largest pumpkin I'd ever brought home. Not the biggest one from the patch of so many, but the largest one the best for carving that I could find. This decision I regretted almost instantly on the walk back through the patch, to where the horses would pick us up and take us back to the farm; I persevered. Stopping more than once to rest. And am glad I did. Finding our pumpkins, washing off the mud in a basin with a pump. Exploring the corn maze, with friends, a candy apple and cider in hand. The perfect way to welcome the season of the witch, the month of the orange glow.

     Welcome, October.