Events full of pumpkins (and other stuff)!

Fall is a very special time here in the Linwood area of Pocahontas County. It heralds the coming of our busy season, when most of our focus turns to Snowshoe Mountain and the ski season.  It also makes this area seem a bit less rural, as you might have to wait for 5 or 6 cars to go by at the stop sign, a rare occurrence outside of winter.

There are some wonderful fall events here. One of our Linwood farmer’s market growers brought this beautiful pumpkin-in-a-tire to our recent community potluck, held last Friday.  We were celebrating a successful farmer’s market season as well as the realization of the Grow Appalachia community garden.  Harvey Galford was generous enough to purchase and cook meat in addition to having provided the land for the garden!  It is amazing to watch the community becoming even more integrated.  Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate, as is frequently the case here, and we ended up having a strong thunderstorm right about the time folks were ready to eat.  Still, quite a few people came out to take part in the celebration and to show their appreciation for all of the hard work and bounty that comes from it.

We have our Linwood Community Daycare sponsored “Trunk or Treat” at the library coming up as well, and plenty of pumpkins (and scarecrows) from the community garden to help decorate and get us into the Halloween spirit! In addition to pumpkins, our community garden is still producing lettuce, spinach, carrots, potatoes, beans and popcorn!  We have begun cleaning up and tilling all of our non-producing space in order to plant our winter time cover crop, and are planning to get some garlic in the ground before the first frost.  In the meantime, we are enjoying one last nod to summer with beautiful weather and are taking advantage of it by working in the garden of course!