LOMAX - It's tough being a pumpkin.
The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
By Kiley Miller/The Hawk Eye (used with permission)
LOMAX - It's tough being a pumpkin.
Think about it. For 11 months of the year, you're the forgotten fruit. (Heck, a lot of folks think you're a vegetable.)
Then, about the time football pads replace baseball bats and rakes sweep away lawnmowers, you get plucked, decapitated, scooped, stabbed and left to rot on a front step with a stupid look on your face. (Hi, I'm goofy. Hi, I'm scary. Hi, I'm angry.) Maybe if you're lucky, a dirt bike-pedaling hoodlum will smash you into a puree before your head collapses.
Yep, it's tough all right. Still, there's something about pumpkins.
And pumpkin patches. Well, they're magical places.
Just ask Kathi Rogers.
For nearly a decade, she and her husband Jim have been selling smiles at Rogers Pumpkin Farm a mile and a half east of town on Highway 96.
Back when they started, the plan was simple - reap as much money as possible from the land.
But now they know: Pumpkin farms grow much more than cash.
Rogers always comes back to a single memory. A few years ago, a young couple visited the farm with their children.
It was clear at the start the husband would rather have been anywhere else. But after a turn in the fall air, watching his children seek out their ideal orange treasure, he told his wife, "You know, this is a lot more fun than Wal-Mart."
"We just encourage people to enjoy themselves," Kathi Rogers said Wednesday. "Relax, take your time. It's quiet out here in the country."
Western Illinois is fertile country. Twenty varieties of edible squash grow on the pumpkin farm, and anyone wanting to carve a dark blue jack o'lantern need look no further for the properly pigmented pumpkin.
"People have gotten used to all my different kinds of pumpkins by now," said Rogers, a teacher's aide in nearby LaHarpe.
Customers roll in from a 60-mile radius. For the past three years, they've come for something even more amazing than grand gourds and stellar squash.
(Get the hint? a-MAZE-ing.)
That's right. Rogers Pumpkin Farm has a corn maze.
This year's version depicts a scarecrow - a five-acre scare crow. Jim and Kathi paced out the design themselves, using a weed trimmer to chop paths when the corn hit 10 inches high.
Young explorers are enticed into the maze by the promise of five hidden birds. Find all five and they go home with a prize.
"I can't tell you more," Rogers said. "That would spoil the secret."
There are at least two other "ag' mazes in the area. Brenda's Corn Maze in Blandinsville is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. every Thursday through Sunday until Nov. 6. It's located one mile east of Blandinsville at 248 Hillcrest Road.
As for Rogers Pumpkin Farm east of Lomax, visitors are welcome from 8 a.m. to dark. Kathi Rogers said she plans to harvest the corn maze when the calendar flips to November, but a warm spell could delay that a bit. Honor students from LaHarpe will dress in costume and "haunt" the maze the evenings of Oct. 28 and 29.
With Halloween fast approaching, countless pumpkin stands are popping up along the highways.
So, if the chill in the air has chilled your spirit, don't go out of your gourd. Just round up the children pull on a sweater and head out in search of that beacon of joy known as a jack o'lantern.
And remember, no matter how bad life gets, at least you're not a pumpkin.