Last post, you’ll remember, I was fretting about pumpkins. I took this photo Thursday, on the way to friend Molly’s Sauvie Island pasture. (Be sure to click on the photo to get a real sense of the place.) “I think it’s not so bad,” Molly said, commenting on my post. “I think the left-over lantern type pumpkins are sold for animal food. Cat food, I’m pretty sure. Or fed to the grower’s own animals. Or plowed under.”

(One thing I like about writing this: I worry about something, or complain, and one of you writes to answer questions, clarify, reassure. Perfect! Thank you!)

Anyway, I’m still concerned about the unsold pumpkins at the grocery stores. They don’t really taste good, so it’s into the dumpster for them, I’m afraid. If you have to carve a pumpkin, maybe get one of the smaller, sweet, edible variety? They’re very healthy, and oh, stop yawning. I saw you.

Saving the world, one pumpkin patch at a time. But you want to know about Molly’s Great Adventure. Like mine, her inner farmer woke up one day last year, and she went out and bought a horse. (Her next novel will be available on October 28 in bookstores, on line, and on Audible. Called “Falling From Horses.” Go to her website to learn more because she’s a great writer: Mollygloss.com)

Her horse, KoKo is an Islandic and about as cute as horses come. Molly pastures her on a small holding on the island along with another horse and miniature mule named Russell. It’s a lot of work, and I tagged along as she hefted flakes of hay, shoveled manure, rearranged hoses and sprinkler heads, which chores have be done once a day. She and another woman share responsibilities, and the pay-off is getting to ride out on the open fields and pastures of the very beautiful, rural island along the Columbia River. To smell the hay in the shed. To watch autumn come to the land.

She’s crazy in love with her new life, and said that much of it is the sense of mastery she has come to feel. Just a hard-ass woman who can shovel shit with the best of them.

So me and my skirt? Molly’s way ahead of me, but she shows me where I’m going. The mastery I want isn’t so much physical, it’s about knowledge. I’m frustrated at the moment by the inertia forced on us by the slowness of road-building bids. When we started, I thought that time wouldn’t matter — we’d do what we could do in the time we have and enjoy the process. Now I think it does matter. We wanted to get the road built before the rains come, and can’t do much else until we do.

Well, I could research apple trees. A very good idea, and if you’ll excuse me, that’s exactly what I’m going to do now. I think they will need to be ordered soon, and planted in the spring.

Oh wait. That means we’d have to have the deer fence up, and . . . we can’t build the fence until the house is built, and . . . we can’t build the house until we have the road.

See what I mean?