Once upon a time in early October, my roommate and I decided that it would be fun to go to the ever-wonderful Indian Creek Farms in Ithaca to get some apples and pumpkins. Neither of us had gotten pumpkins in a really long time, and my apple collection at our apartment was upsettingly low — so into my car we went! It was a cool Saturday afternoon and off we venture to the farm. I had no idea what we would be getting into, to be honest. So that was the first issue with this plan.

We finally got to the farm, and after talking to someone about where we had to go, we drove up to the apple trees. After about an hour, we had picked about 15 perfect apples — they really were the most perfect apples in the world. They had a shine like no other and a taste that was so sweet and crisp. They were the most perfect apples I'd ever seen, so obviously, we took them all home with us.

Then, of course, we found the pumpkin patch. This is when the story gets good. Our original plan was to go out and get a couple pumpkins, but what actually happened was we found 21 baby pumpkins that were too cute to be left behind. We also found two giant "parent" pumpkins. So in total, we had 23 pumpkins. 23. Now some may think that's entirely too many pumpkins, and I, a previously nonbeliever, would also have thought that was the case. However, once we got home we knew that we would love all of these pumpkins and apples like they were our family. And that’s exactly what we did.

Now, most stories have an ending like — oh we got bored of the pumpkins and got rid of them, or we carved them and placed them outside for the world to see or we cut into them for the seeds. Our story, however, does not have an ending like that. We have all of our pumpkins still. All of them but one. One of them died because my boyfriend decided it would be hilarious to hide one in the freezer. However, after taking it out of the freezer, it became as squishy as a stress ball and it needed to be disposed of.

So now we have 22 pumpkins all around our house. Some on the dining room table, some on the side tables, a couple on the main table, two on our TV stand and one in the cupboard. Yes — the cupboard. And I’m not really sure why it’s still there, but no one has moved it, so there it lives.

I fear that the pumpkins will live there indefinitely. I fear that we will have to split custody of these pumpkins when we move out. I fear that there are pumpkins hidden in places I haven’t yet searched, and we will find them while moving out. It’s an exciting time in our apartment. And the future of our pumpkin family is one I look forward to seeing.