Cinderalla to be done in with a sharp knife...

This, dear friends, is a Cinderella pumpkin, an heirloom variety that my friend and grower Janice Guldan, directed me to when I shared with her my desire to whip up a pumpkin bisque this weekend. This beauty, Janice said patting its firm flesh, will yield more than a dozen cups of bright orange, moist pulp. And at a mere $3, was a better bargain than the orange pie pumpkins I had been eyeing. Janice has my back when it comes to vegetables, my friends.

The heirloom gets its moniker because it grows fat and squat with deep ridges, so it resembles Cinderella's carriage. You know the one; it was majically cast from a lowly pumpkin by a fairy Godmother who dropped in a couple of hipster mice to drive the pimped-out pumpkin over to Prince's Gala at First Avenue. Of course, Cinderella's carriage reverted back to a pumpkin at midnight; my beauty won't be transformed into soup until at least mid-day Saturday.
Sadly, our mundane lives aren't often transformed by fairies who pimp out veggies and transform us in a way that makes us more palatable to the upper crust. Wait. I think I just read something about that.

Chain stores chain you to mediocrity...

Wal-Mart's second quarter 2008 earnings were reported by the company to be $101 billion. SuperValu Corporation reported 2007 revenues of roughly $37 billion. Target Corp., meanwhile, reported 2007 earnings of more than $63 billion, of which 34 percent was attributed to consumables and commodities.

In many of our local communities, the three corporations listed above account for a good chunk of your "choice" when it comes time to fill the cupboard and the fridge. Now, I'm a free market person and I'm not implying that large corporations are evil. I'm just saying that if you are freaking out about the cost of food these days, think about what kind of margin, built into the price of Hamburger Helper, goes into supporting those kinds of earnings.

There are better ways to eat. And it's not elitist to want to eat better or feed your children healthier foods. After all, food allergies in children are up 34 percent in the last decade. Highly processed foods, widely available at big-box stores and touted as a "convenience," are noted as a cause.

We can do better for ourselves and it's not that hard to find local sources of "slow" foods. It might take a bit of time up front to locate your sources, but once they're in place, eating good food will become far more convenient than running to Super Target for a processed frozen dinner labeled Archer Farms (which isn't really a farm but a "brand" created by Target).

The road to Heaven is paved with sinners...

Across the road, for as far as the eye can see, stands corn. It’s dry and shriveled and scantly reminiscent of the image that comes to mind when one thinks of a field of corn. Yet, corn it is; corn destined to be used for animal feed or human food or fuel. Its purpose has been decided upon by the man who planted it.

That’s how things work in agriculture. The one who sets the seed is the one who brings his crop to the market of his choice. It’s neat and tidy and mildly enviable. Another agriculture-rooted cliché comes to mind: cut and dried.

We humans, meanwhile, are set onto the same rich soil and given an opportunity to take root. The trouble is that it isn’t always easy to discern where best to apply the energy inherent in our genetics. No one is sitting up on a tractor deciding for us; our purpose on earth isn’t cut and dried. Are we meant for food? Are we better used as fuel?

Corn that’s converted to ethanol is corn that doesn’t end up in the food system. Corn that ends up in processed foods strengthens our commodity-based food system, but doesn’t do much to advance human nutrition or aid the nation in its quest to become “independent” of foreign oil. Therefore, even when purpose is predetermined, as it is with corn, some are satisfied and others are left wanting.

Humans are endowed with far greater potential than plants, of course, and so solving the “why am I here” dilemma seems far more pressing than clearing cornfields. The withering stalks remind me daily that winter, a vivid metaphor for aging – for death, is nipping at my heels. I must be getting on with this business of deciding how to live with purpose.

A man I knew once was fond of saying the easiest way to get to Heaven is to not sin. This is not useful advice. Between here and there you can plant a whole lot of corn.

My friend from grammar school reminds me that our purpose in life is to “know and love and serve God.” She’s right, of course, but she omitted the part of the answer that lies at the root of my search. I understand that my existence must serve a greater good and Truth (capital T); what I’ve been unable to put my finger on is what route I should take to get there, because I can’t take her route, or my neighbor’s route, or my colleague’s route, or the “no sin” route favored by the man mentioned above.

It seems there must be a million roads that can carry a person toward knowing and loving and serving God. I’m not looking for the easy road. I’m not looking for the fast road. I’m not looking for the less-traveled road. I’m not looking for the high road and I’m not even looking for a new road. I’m looking for my road, the route that lets me travel at my pace and allows for the fact that I hate maps and so I tend to get myself lost an awful lot.

Looking to escape the inevitable...

Weekends in mid-autumn are filled with the routine tasks of preparing for what lies ahead: winter.

Hubby mows to chop up the fallen leaves, because raking would be ridiculous. While he does that, I walk the vineyard rows and attempt to repair any limbs torn from the trellis by recent winds. The leaves are curled and bronzed. a result (I hope) of the changing seasons and not a consequence of some unidentified or left-untreated disease. (The grape experts said year one should be disease free.) But that's really all that's to be done in the vineyard now. The bulk of our pruning and preparing for season two will occur in February.

Later, hubby and I load up the bench, the chairs and tables, the swing and the hammock, and stack the furnishings of summer in the granary; we drape the pieces in plastic to protect them from the birds that nest in the building. It seems not all that long ago when I pulled all those things out of storage and set them in place in the yard. It was early, before planting. Oh, how the days of our life pass us by!

A sense of sadness pervades this activity. Although we've had a temperate autumn so far, experience tells us winter can invade without much notice, and the old man has been known to linger like a bad cough. None of us can predict the future, though. Autumn may stretch itself all the way into December. On the other hand, the landscape could turn starkly white by week's end.

It's the latter scenario that leaves me longing for an escape, a right turn onto the road that heads south to points unknown. I sense that I may finally embark on that trip,which I've longed to take most of my life, the adventure that doesn't come with an itinerary, the journey of discovery that can't possibly be mapped out in advance. Perhaps this is a quest to answer the question most of us need to pose to ourselves at least once in a lifetime: why am I here?