Photos taken at Lone Pine Farms, located in Junction City, Oregon
In one moment, spongey soil quietly beds the cracked gray vines that web so many tiger-orange lumps. In one moment, the sound of perishing sunflowers sloping to the ground combines with the scent of ripe, rotten, and raw pumpkins resting. In one moment, a sticky six-year-old spots a mushy spot on a marmalade pumpkin and attacks. His feet slaughter the once serene growth process like Godzilla entering Tokyo. “This one! This one!” A 10-year-old girl wraps her petite hands around a perfect pearl pumpkin. Families flood the patch like waves washing up on a beach—in and out, loud then quiet. There is a pumpkin for every kid, every mom, every dad, every teenager, every grandparent. Big, small, stout, tall, smooth, curvy, lumpy, light, dark, round, and oblong.
In the Lone Pine Farms annual pumpkin patch, located in Junction City, Farmer Mike Jensen grows a “Magic Pumpkin” for everyone. Visitors come from all over the Eugene area just to feel the spirit of Fall and to find their pumpkin doppelgänger. It’s a place of rituals and traditions that mark the change in season—amber boots and apricot knit sweaters, hot apple cider in thermoses, photographs of assorted stacks of pumpkins. One can discern the memories with every picked up pumpkin. A group of teenagers intending on carving the most ghoulish ghosts onto their Halloween pumpkins, know they don’t celebrate the holiday the same way they used to, but the patch still feels the same. These mystical grounds permeate the sentiment of change and warmth. A couple walks in the patch with a wheelbarrow and families walk out with a wheelbarrow, haphazardly packed with plentiful pumpkins and chaotic children climbing on top, it’s more of a trudge.
