pumpkins in the sky, revised

Well, the first and only vice presidential debate is over.  I was a little worried when I saw that first side-view shot of Biden.  That flap of skin beneath his chin looked pretty bad.  It looked like someone could tuck a small acorn squash in there.  Meanwhile, Paul Ryan looked young, like a kid who had just come home from camp.  At one point I was sure that I could see a little chocolate sauce on one of his ears.  But I'm glad the debate is over.  Election season always coincides with pumpkin season, and I'm not equipped to write about politics.  I'm much more well equipped to write about pumpkins.  Pumpkins are big and orange, and much like the republican candidate, they are hollow on the inside.  Just tap on one.  You'll hear an empty cavity.  But I really do want to leave this debate behind.  We spread wood ash on the fields today.  I kicked myself several times for not having a camera handy.  It was great to watch the clouds of smoky ash enshroud Stan as he threw ash onto the fields. 

I thought it would be a piece of cake to clear the fields and prepare them for garlic planting, but I was wrong.  By the time lunch break rolled around today, I was beat.  I ate my sandwich, drank a little coffee, took a fifteen minute break, and then headed back into the fields to play around.  The winter squash harvest was in.  It took us a week to harvest the squash.  We harvested it; we loaded it onto big boxes attached to the tractor; we covered it from the frost; we buffed it and polished it for market.  We pulled the drip lines from the fields and we spread wood ash on the fields so that next year's crop will be robust.  This is a small farm—we are not certified organic, but we follow organic practices.  Going into the fields after a squash harvest and hurling pumpkins into the air is not organic practice, but it sure is fun.

  

I was pretty tired when I went into the field this afternoon, and so it took me a minute to realize how much fun I was actually having.  We harvested all the sale-able squash and all the seconds (i.e. squash that are still good but not super pretty), and so what remained in the field were butternuts and pumpkins that were either rotten, too small, or too weirdly misshapen to appeal to anyone.  I could smash any pumpkin I saw.  If I wanted to throw a pumpkin into the air, I could. I would throw them as high as I possibly could and point my camera at them, like a hunter at a skeet shooting range.  I wanted a snap shot of a pumpkin hitting the ground and bursting into a hundred pumpkin fragments, but that picture proved impossible to get.  Several pumpkins nearly fell on my head. 

The clouds were really nice this afternoon, and I kept thinking how horrible it would be if Mitt Romney became president.  I was wondering what would change if he were to become our next president.  Would I become poorer than I already am?  Would Planned Parenthood disappear entirely?  Would we go to war with Iran?  Would my town get a second WalMart?  Would it become even harder to find a good bagel?  How much fatter would we become?  Would some of the people who are threatening to leave this country actually leave if he were elected?  I'm just not ready for another right-wing administration.  Bush the 2nd was not that long ago.