The Great Pumpkin

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The Great Pumpkins return

I learned this week that a blog post should always tell a story, beginning with, “Once upon a time.”

Once upon a time, there was a four-acre hillside that housed seven potbelly pigs, one potbelly pig, three donkeys, eight goats, two turkeys, nine geese, eight ducks, and an indeterminate number of chickens because that number seem to fluctuate every morning when new roosters appeared. Very mysterious. All of these animals were disgruntled. They didn’t get second breakfast.

No matter how sad they looked when a car passed their fence, when the house people that they just knew could hear them disgruntling didn’t give them their second breakfast, and the door to the hay mow didn’t open no matter how hard they banged on it, food did not appear.

November nights were sometimes warm and sometimes cold. The animals buried into the straw on cold nights and dream that the next day’s breakfast would multiply until suppertime.

On November 7, a car did stop. Only it wasn’t a car. It was a truck. It was a truck pulling a wagon. The wagon was full of pumpkins: big round juicy seed-and-pulp-filled pumpkins. Magic Dave and Jane had arrived! Dave and Jane were the best people in the whole world. When these Great Pumpkins visited, squash rained from the sky. Orange fruits hit the ground and burst open with squashy orange goodness.

The animals ate until their bellies dragged on the ground. The sun warmed the chilly November ground and their full bellies. When evening came, they ate their supper and finished what juicy bits were on the ground for dessert. Donkeys kept watch over the wagon. Pigs snored, dreaming of lip-dripping squash threads. Fowl purred contentedly in their roosts. Goats burped (they always burp.) The people in the house sang songs of praise for peace, delivered by Great Pumpkins.

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You’re The Great Pumpkin, Dave Hilty

There’s a story that makes the rounds every autumn on farms and in fields, and especially here on The Quarry Farm, about the generosity and beneficence of The Great Pumpkin, who rises from the pumpkin patch some time during the month of October and gifts all the good chickens and ducks and donkeys, turkeys and geese and goats and pigs with succulent orange orbs packed full of seeds and strings and goo. And while it’s rumored that the legend of The Great Pumpkin is born of humans, that particular mindset gains little acceptance on the farm, for it’s as the goats say, Humans spend most of their brainpower just maintaining their balance. And for the few that still might think otherwise, the donkey’s argument always prevails, one which he delivers in the most solemn of voices: Schulz, or no Schulz, Peanuts are for eating.

This year, as in years past, the residents here all waited anxiously as the month wore on, staring to the south for a sign of His (though some say Her) coming. Baskets of apples were delivered and pears by the bucketful and truckloads of zucchini and they were greatly appreciated, certainly, and swallowed down to the very last seed. But of The Great Pumpkin, there was no sign. October came and went and…

Nothing.

It’s just as we thought, the geese cried. Great Pumpkin, piffle. Great Poppycock is more like it. To which comment there was general agreement, particularly among the fowl (birds of a feather, you know). The goats made do, browsing the trees and bushes. Buddy, the donkey, cropped grass and chewed hay and if, occasionally, he seemed a bit tearful, nobody said a word. Little Pig, though, kept her own counsel and spent a good bit of each day off alone, walking along the southern fence line, eyes on the horizon, waiting.

And so it was that Little Pig was the first to see him: The Great Pumpkin, sitting in the cab of his red and silver pickup truck and towing along behind him a veritable mountain of pumpkins. A whole week late, he was, the first full week of November having past, but those that live here on The Quarry Farm are quick to understand simple truths: Time is fluid and Better late than not at all, not to mention All that matters is what matters in the end, especially when it’s pumpkins in the end.

The Great Pumpkin pulled in through the gate and up the stone drive before stopping and hopping down from his perch. To either side of the squash-laden wagon he threw the great round balls of sheer joy. The pumpkins bounced and broke and spilled their treasure of seeds and strings and slippery orange goo.

Heaven! Little Pig shouted. Slippery orange heaven!

The pumpkins flew and flew and still they flew and, finally, when the ducks and chickens and turkeys and geese and goats and donkey and pigs were certain that he had finished, when the blue and gray sky was no longer streaked with orange, what they heard him say made them all stop and stare.

How ‘bout if I just leave the wagon, The Great Pumpkin said. I won’t need it again ‘til spring.

turkey

They all looked to the wagon and it was heaped with pumpkins, mounded with pumpkins, buried in pumpkins as if not a single one had ever soared and fallen and broken and exploded in great gouts of seeds and strings and (heavenly) slippery orange goo.

The Great Pumpkin fiddled about a bit at the front of the wagon and then hopped into his red and silver truck.

Give a shout when you’re through, they all heard him say. No hurry, though.

The Great Pumpkin waved as he pulled away and through the gate, moving south until he’d disappeared from sight. Every duck and chicken, goose and turkey, donkey and goat and pig thanked him a big thanks before tucking into their chosen pumpkin. And if Little Pig was a bit greedy, if she pushed aside a goose or three to suckle at the slippery orange goo, nudged out of her way a chicken or a turkey or a duck, well, then, maybe she could find forgiveness in the eyes of those who keep the faith, in the hearts of those who believe.

POSTSCRIPT:
Special thanks to Dave and Jane Hilty, who are this year’s Great Pumpkins at The Quarry Farm.