Marlene caught me with a microfiber cloth in the pumpkin patch on Saturday and I do not regret a single swipe. The cloth came back amber. Amber, you guys. Off a pumpkin. In October. In the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the only thing that should be coming off a pumpkin in October is dirt and possibly a stink bug.
Every single Cinderella, every Jarrahdale, every white Casper on that wagon had a sheen on it that does not occur in nature, and I have been growing pumpkins on five acres for four seasons now. Real pumpkins look like they’ve been outside. These looked like they’d been to a dealership.
I posted about it in Real Food, Real Pumpkins, Real Talk (3,400 members, very active, no MLM moms allowed since the spring purge) and within ninety seconds Heather from the Brevard chapter confirmed what I already suspected. Most patches within driving distance of a U-Pick Instagram presence are now spraying their gourds with a food-grade carnauba blend, sometimes cut with mineral oil, sometimes — and this is what got me sitting down at my own kitchen island — with the exact shellac they use on grocery store apples. The same shellac. On the porch decor. That my children carry into my house.
My sister-in-law Tisha works the front desk at a pediatric urgent care in Hendersonville and is basically a nurse, and she told me they get at least one kid a fall who teethes on a decorative pumpkin and comes in with what she calls, professionally, “the gourd mouth.” Those are her words. She has a clipboard. I’m not making this up.
Marlene’s middle one, Beckett, who is six and a half and a known licker, got a hold of a Lumina yesterday at the Hayride and Hot Cider event and his tongue is, as of this writing, a slightly different color than it was on Friday. Marlene says it’s fine. Marlene also said the splash pad was fine and that her flamingo’s eleven-day off-gas in the sunroom was fine, so I have stopped taking Marlene’s fine at face value.
Now — I want to be careful here, because I am not anti-wax. Beeswax is essentially a mineral. The Mennonite stand off 191 rubs theirs with beeswax and a clean cotton rag and they will tell you so if you ask, which I always do, and Mrs. Yoder once let me hold the rag. That is a different conversation. That is a conversation I am at peace with. A pumpkin from Mrs. Yoder will sit on my porch for six weeks, soften gracefully, and return to the soil like it was raised to.
What we are talking about is a product called, and I had to ask Graham to confirm the name twice, PRODUCE GLOSS 7. It comes in a five-gallon drum. The seasonal hand at one of the bigger patches between here and Weaverville told Graham about it while they were both in line at the Lowe’s contractor desk, completely unprompted, the way men volunteer information when there is no woman they’re trying to impress. Graham has no reason to make this up. Graham can barely remember our anniversary.
I asked at the patch register on Saturday what they use and the teenager said, and I quote, “like a spray? I think there’s a spray.” That was enough. We left without our wagon. Cleo cried for forty minutes in the car and I let her, because some lessons are worth a meltdown.
The pumpkins on my porch right now are four sad little sugar pies from the farmers market, one (1) Mennonite Cinderella that cost what a movie ticket costs, and a butternut Wyatt insists is “basically a pumpkin.” Marlene came over Sunday and called my display sparse. I called it honest. She left with a date ball.
I am growing my own next year. Sixteen vines, maybe twenty if Graham doesn’t notice the seed order on the credit card. The slugs can have whatever they want. At least the slugs aren’t lying to me.