With the first frost of the season and daylight savings now having passed, we must accept the somber reality that Halloween is once again in our rearview mirror. The ghosts and goblins have retreated back behind the moonlight, the witches have flown away on their broomsticks and the jack-o-lanterns have returned to the ground from which they grew.
As November now plods her heavy feet towards the coming snow, we are reminded of the words of Robert Frost: “My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be. She loves the bare, the withered tree. She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: she’s glad the birds are gone away. She’s glad her simple worsted gray is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees, the faded earth, the heavy sky, the beauties she so truly sees, she thinks I have no eye for these, and vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know the love of bare November days before the coming of the snow, but it were vain to tell her so, and they are better for her praise.”
So, on the earliest of these new November days, the good folks at The Hanna Farmstead were all too happy to help jack-o-lanterns return to the ground.
This past weekend, The Hanna Farmstead held a two day-long “pumpkin demolition” event at their Lewisburg location. Visitors to the farm had the chance to send Halloween off with a bang by launching pumpkins through the air with slingshots and smashing them back into the earth with mallets. Participants even had the opportunity to test their throwing accuracy in the “pumpkin toss.”
Now, as the Mountain State readies itself for the long, cold months to come, as the autumn amber gives way to the winter white, there remains reason to be hopeful.
After all, Halloween is only 357 days away.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.