Reaping.

One of the highlights of my little trip was yet another of the ‘go all out for Halloween’ folks calling my whole idea of the Harvest ‘boring’.

Yes. Boring.

I get that quite a bit, actually. “What’s your theme?” Go on to describe that I want things well lit with torches and no strobes or any lighting effects. “Why” is the best I can hope for. “Boring” is more typical.

You don’t go around calling yourself unorthodox without getting a lot of ‘why’ and ‘boring’, I’ve decided.

Anyhow, some history on the ‘boring’ idea. Some time back I got a complaint that my work desktop was ‘depressing’. At the time it was a pile of skulls, so I set out to find a less depressing, yet halloweenish desktop. Since it was awful hard to find anything of mine minus skulls, I found this.

From An UnOrthOdOx Halloween

The longer it sat staring at me at work, and the more setbacks I had in the whole Spider Woman plan, the more it began to call to me. Thus, after one last setback, The Harvest was born.

Returning home, I deemed the pile of corn at my disposal insufficient to the task at hand, and with most sources either being too expensive (not free), or already tapped, it was time to strike out to plan B in earnest.

Mom’s big book of botanical omniscience declares this to be reed grass. I just call it great. Pulling up along side the road in the middle of nowhere, and start reaping the stuff from the ditch.

From 2010 Buildup

About 1 and 1/3 of a truckload later…I swiftly ran out of my intended storage, keeping this all off the grass till final week of October. (1/3 truckload because an airplane crashed into me. But that’s a long story in and of itself. Let me just say to whomever makes emergency kits, red soap to wash wounds makes it awful difficult to tell what’s blood and what’s soap…) So, there’s been some spillage into the yard.

From 2010 Buildup

So, the cat’s out of the bag where we are going here. These sheaves will be spread out much more, stacked everywhere. Probably less grass/corn per sheave, and spread out to appear as big.

From 2010 Buildup

Corn, corn, and more corn…

Importing of corn stalks is in full swing.

And, we needed some means of storing all this corn I’m bringing in before I go about setting up how I want.

First in line to be filled as storage was our whiskey barrel. In a little bit of a coming out ceremony, we moved it out behind the countdown to help drive home our new theme.

From 2010 Buildup

The rest…is in one heck of a bundle right now. 2ft deep, 6 ft wide, I figured to strap it to the fence to keep it all up and sturdy, and provide me a little means of decoration/advertisement.

From 2010 Buildup

And, I have about half that left to go pick up.

I may just make it through the whole corn setup without having to fall back on plan B. But, there IS a plan B just in cast this proves not quite enough. It sure is looking like a lot, can’t wait to start setting it up for real…

With corn in hand, it’s time to start thinking on the Pumpkins.

So far, leading candidate is a farmer in Harrisville, pay by weight. Average price for the size I want is $2.

Wal-Mart would be slightly cheaper for bigger pumpkins. Sacco’s is out of the question.

Have to check Day Farms still…

The stand we found last year does not have pumpkins yet, however, and if they are anywhere close to the 18 pumpkins for under $12 we got last year, I’m sure it’s gonna be the winner.

The Harvest prep begins…….

With the Laboratory finished, it’s time to turn our attention fully towards The Harvest.

Why did we choose such a simple theme?

Could be the bad year. Could be a little perturbed that some deem such things ‘lesser’ haunts…”not scary enough”. Could be getting back in touch with my youth, hearing strange growls coming from deeper within the corn as I was picking to earn money for school clothes in those dark hours before dawn….Probably a mixture.

There are three primary focuses.

Corn.

Pumpkins.

Scarecrows.

You’ve seen the pumpkin test. We’ve been harvesting all the corn stalks I can get my hands on. It’s time to unveil the scarecrows.

From 2010 Buildup
From 2010 Buildup

And even a mask for Kyle…

From 2010 Buildup

I don’t know how many more we’ll end up with just yet…testing out an idea for my own mask now…

If you are local and interested in assisting, we are looking for:

Corn stalks
Branches
vines
scrap lumber

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Categorized as The Harvest