Page 4 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About

But he was getting ahead of himself. First, he had to learn the art of growing squashes. Win Stu’s trust. Buy out Fox Family Farm when Stu retired or died, if Sadie didn’t take over. Knock down the garage. Expand operations. Become a squash magnate. In roughly that order.

He was still working on steps one and two.

Sadie jostled Josh from his reverie. “I honestly have no fucking clue whether there are even pruning shears in here. I kind of wanted to make you go away.”

He scanned his eyes across Stu’s workbench, littered with plant starter trays, egg cartons, and a stack of Wooden Boats magazines.

Did Stu want to own or make a wooden boat?

Hard to believe, considering how rarely the man left the twenty-mile radius around his farm, no part of which had a sizable body of water.

“Why does Stu have Wooden Boats magazine?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“You sure do curse a lot.” If she talked to him so bluntly, he could try returning the favor.

“And you called your neighbor a ‘dingus.’ Apparently only one of us learned from the master.” She meant Stu, of course, whose colorful language made him wince.

Josh could have learned similar skills from his own hotheaded parents, but the pendulum had swung the other way in his case.

She wasn’t the first person to pick on him for his fuddy-duddy vocabulary, and she wouldn’t be the last. It wasn’t that he was against cursing.

But training himself not to curse meant the silliest words came out in the moments of true crisis.

“Stu has rubbed off on me in lots of ways, but I’ll stick to my less colorful language.”

“I can try to tone it down if it bugs you.”

Josh had asked Stu to dial it back once after Shadowfax stepped on his foot and Stu threatened to “ride the sumbitch into hell using his own fucking intestines as the reins.” Then the man refrained from cursing for a good twenty minutes or so before casually referring to one of his beloved pumpkins as a “motherfucker.” Cursing was in Stu’s nature, but it wasn’t infused with venom.

Neither was Sadie’s. Josh had a lifetime of experience to tell the difference.

“No need. If you’re anything like your father, you’re delightful, despite your… whole deal.”

She raised her eyebrows. “My whole deal?”

“The tattoos, the black clothes, the hostility. I bet you’re actually a ray of sunshine.”

She scoffed. “Not something I’ve ever been accused of.”

Josh smiled. For someone who wanted him to go away, she was sticking around.

And her offering to rein in the cursing implied future conversations.

He started opening drawers in the workbench.

“While we’re baring our souls, I don’t know anything about zoning.

But it can’t be that complicated, right? ”

Sadie held up the pruning shears and Josh brightened even further. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” she asked.

He honestly didn’t.

Josh’s Squashes vended at the farmers market twice a week.

On off days delivered wholesale produce to various local businesses.

He had automated so much of his farm—minus all the hand-pollinating and vine-adjusting he had to do—that it left him ample free time.

He hadn’t gotten out of the tech world to continue to grind at the pace start-ups demanded, after all.

Then he started working with an established company, where the grind was swapped out with unending strings of compromises on his creative visions that made him feel utterly worthless and ultimately burned-out.

Growing squash felt useful and energized him.

Consequently, now that he was confident in his ability to scale his current projects, he wanted more land. Stu’s land, ideally.

“Don’t throw those shears at me. I’ve seen the arm on you,” he said, dodging the answer to her question. She made an exaggeratedly slow underhand motion and lobbed them at him anyway. “I could ask you the same question. Coming back to Pea Blossom just for your dad’s pumpkins?”

“I worked it out,” she said cryptically. “I’m also supposed to do the foraging for the farmers market, but Stu really needed me for the pumpkins.”

She called her father Stu? “Your dad’s stall at the farmers market is next to mine,” Josh said. “I love the foraged goods. Too bad you missed ramp season. They were especially delicious this year.”

“Stu said the same thing.”

“Do you have his crabapple jelly recipe? I’ve asked for it a million times and he always refuses.”

“No shit. It’s a secret family recipe. What do you take me for?”

Her eyes flashed wickedly and Josh shrugged. “Worth a try.”

He left the garage, heading back to the pumpkin patch. Sadie followed. He was choosing to take it as a good sign. “We might be able to salvage your entry in the weigh-off.”

“It’ll be pathetic if we’re starting with cuttings at this point,” Sadie said.

Yeah, it would be daunting. But he owed this to Stu. Despite the hogs’ best efforts to ruin everything, he had an ace in his sleeve.

“What if I let you take over one of my plants?”

“You grow giant pumpkins?” The disdain in her voice would have withered a weaker person. He found it funny.

“Among other things,” Josh offered. “I’m the purveyor of Josh’s Squashes.”

“That’s a ridiculous fucking name. And it’ll never work,” she said immediately.

Indeed it might have been a reach when he called her a ray of sunshine. “Why not?”

“I was going to make an appeal to the Growers Guild to let me tend the pumpkins while my dad’s away.

The argument is that he planted them and grew them to their current state.

I, in turn, will send him photos and follow his instructions exactly.

Letting him make all the judgment calls.

There’s no way they’re going to let me enter a pumpkin in his name if you’re the one who propagated it. ”

“So enter it in your name,” Josh said, and he saw the temptation wash over her face like he was the devil on her shoulder. She was a true competitor, just like Stu.

What if she won? Stu would get a kick out of it, and Josh would never hear the end of it. He could hear it now. Look how my out-of-practice daughter wiped the floor with you.

But if he won? Stu wouldn’t like it, but he would respect it. And if Josh wanted all of Stu’s deepest secrets—pumpkin growing tips, his crabapple jelly recipe, whatever could possibly make him sell his land—he needed that respect.

He egged Sadie on. “You’d rather make the judgment calls yourself, wouldn’t you?” She bit her lower lip. “The Growers Guild meeting is on Sunday. You were planning to go, right? We can go together. I can drive us.”

“I don’t drive, so I was going to need a ride anyway.”

She almost smiled again, and it was almost bliss.