I tagged along on my kindergartener's field trip to The Tree Farm to collect pumpkins, popcorn and gourds. The Tree Farm's in Cross Plains, about a twenty-minute drive northwest of Madison into beautiful terrain. I am not yet qualified to pass the Wisconsin citizenship test, because I haven't achieved fluency in the geologic terms moraine, esker, drumlin, kettle, or kame, but the effects of glaciation are dramatically apparent, even to me, as you drive toward Cross Plains. All at once, densely forested hills appear. They're not mountainous enough to make you feel hemmed in, but have the effect of drawing a broad horizontal line that underscores the big sky. There's mostly farmland at the foot of the hills, which this time of year shines green with cover crop clover. And on the way to the farm, there's Indian Lake, which glistens in the sun like a soft-focus fantasy.
The Tree Farm is a working farm where visitors can pick their own produce. It's set on a ridge with stunning views of the lake below, wooded hills in the distance, and acres of farmland in between. The cutting garden was still alive with color from bachelor's buttons in several different hues:
And one of the farm's vegetable beds had rows of cabbages coming into their own, planted in a gentle arc:
The whole family returned to The Tree Farm today to load up on more pumpkins (90 lbs. worth, as it turned out), and more popcorn (I wanted more of the ruby-colored maize), and more gourds (although I won't be waxing and polishing them while watching the World Series, as Katharine White used to).
It was a stunning fall day today, the sky so cloudless and blue that colors seen against the sky punch out as if you were wearing 3-D glasses that actually worked. Red and orange leaves are the crowd-pleasers, of course, but the real wonder on a day like this is when you see yellow foliage high up against the fall sky...it's not just the color of jaundice and chlorosis anymore.
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