Page 29 of There's Pumpkin About You
“You want to help?”
She nods. “If I’m going to work with you on the farm, it would be helpful if I actually knew the farm. Besides, it’s something new to learn, and you might need some help carrying something.”
“I’m pretty sure that whatever you could carry with two hands, I can still carry with just one,” I scoff.
Her eyes narrow to a playful glare. “I’ll have you know, August, that I am a regular at my local gym where I spend a lot of time doing deadlifts.”
I watch the ground, following the way my boot shuffles the dirt around, hoping that it will hide the beginning of a smile.
“Alright, Dwayne Johnson. Let’s see what you got.”
* * *
WREN
Even though you can see one of the pumpkin fields from the entrance to the farm, the walk towards it is further than you think. Mix that in with the fact that I have to try and keep up with a man twice my height whilst I’m in heeled boots and I’ve essentially run a marathon from the office to the field.
I’m out of breath and I chastise myself internally because I know it’s not just because of the walk. There was… something there when Gus and I were outside of the office—something alien and frightening. It’s almost as if there was no space for arguments or disagreements, not when what was there in its place was so… raw?
It felt like something I should have felt during all of that time with Adam, something every person should get to experience at least once in their lives. And of all the people to experience it with, mine just so happened to be with the one man I can never seem to see eye to eye with.
The pumpkin field when up close is gorgeous. From afar it looks like a picture for a postcard, but up close you can see the true size of both the field and the pumpkins within it. Cinderella wouldn’t have needed a spell if she’d just bought her pumpkin from Goldleaf Farm.
Suddenly, it’s as if that vision I had of my children playing and working as a team to lift just one of these seems idiotic and naive.
Each row sits surprisingly neatly, each pumpkin seeming to know its place and grow accordingly, making it easy for someone to walk up and down the rows.
Gus continues to walk towards the leftmost row, carefully observing each pumpkin as he does.
“So, do you need to check every single one before harvesting it?” I ask, genuinely curious.
He nods confidently, his attention not straying from his task. “Usually, I would do so as we harvest, leave the ones that can’t be harvested in the plot for afterwards, but to save time I set myself the task of doing so today. It helps to get a gist of how well we’ll do this year in terms of inventory.”
My eyes catch on one pumpkin that sits nestled between two large ones. My guess is that the poor little thing hasn’t had the space to grow because of its neighbors, forced to grow in the shade. The quality of it still looks superb—bright green and white outer layer with an almost fairytale-like curl to its vines, but it’s no bigger than a box of tissues.
“What do you do with ones like these? Do people ask for small ones like this?”
He stops his checks to walk back over and stoop down beside me, surrounding me with the smell of pine. His head tilts to the side as he looks at the tiny pumpkin I’m pointing at.
“Sometimes. Over Halloween, some businesses like the café use the small ones for decorations, but lately they’ve taken to using fake ones because the pumpkins don’t like the warm environment for too long.”
“Can you still use them to cook?”
He frowns, but not in a way that shows annoyance, more like concentration.
“I wouldn’t,” he answers as he leans in closer. “It’ll taste quite bitter. The more orange the skin the better it’ll taste. I might just have to throw this one away which will be a shame.”
He glances in my direction, his eyes dipping down to my lips once before standing up and continuing on.
“Surely there’s other things that can be done with them?”
“Like what?”
I take a second to think. “Maybe you could take those ones and do a mini pumpkin patch for children? That way they can harvest their own pumpkins without getting hurt. Or you could offer them to festivals? There’s a Halloween festival in Beckford where they do those haunted hayrides and stuff. I’m sure if they happen to have a pumpkin that starts to slowly rot it can only help the whole ‘haunted’ thing?”
“You sound like you’ve given this a fair bit of thought.”
“These are just ideas I’m having off the top of my head.”
