Andrea Cooley Creative Services

I know it’s fall when Adam and I find buckeyes and acorns on our walks. There are a plethora of acorns in our neighborhood ranging from little baby guys who must have been blown down to big plump nuts that proudly display their hats (does anyone else think the tops of acorns look like top hats? They’re so cute! I wish I had a picture.

I get my appreciation for acorns and buckeyes from my mom. The story goes that when my parents were dating and going to school at Iowa State that my dad would collect the best acorns and save them for my mom. That would explain why there were always stray acorns in our drawers growing up.

Buckeyes are just special little treasures in my mind. There was a big buckeye tree at Drake and I remember carefully choosing a buckeye for all my roommates in the fall. I would present them to them hidden in my hand and make them guess what I had for them. I guess you could say I find pleasure in small things!

Buckeyes are harder to find. We knew there was a buckeye tree along one of the roads we like to walk down, we’d seen the casings but we hadn’t seen any buckeyes yet. Then yesterday we were walking and saw a big SUV pulled over by a stand of trees. A woman was filling an entire shopping bag with the nuts! Much to Adam’s embarrassment I power walked toward her and caught her just as she was climbing in to drive away and asked “Did you leave any buckeyes for us?” (I have no idea what she needed so many for, Adam thought she must be making buckeye soup). Sheepishly she replied, “Oh I don’t know, there are a lot still up in the trees.”

I didn’t want a lot of buckeyes, I already have a bowl of them at home, but it’s always nice to get a few fresh ones. We only found 3, but they were big, fat ones! I love it when they are fresh out of their pods, they have an almost oily texture to them. Adam commented that the ones we found were too big for a squirrel to carry. Does anyone know if you can eat buckeyes?

The second sign it’s fall is that it’s grape stomping time! This is the highlight of Adam’s year. Summerset Winery in Indianola is only 20 minutes south of Des Moines. Every year they have harvesting weekends and we have participated for the last 3 years.

The morning starts with breakfast serve breakfast and talk about the winery and the grapes we’ll be picking (this year we picked frontenac grapes which they use to blend is some of their dryer red wines), then we head out to start picking! This is where Adam is in his element. He has said that if he ever gets tired of working with computers he’ll work at a winery. I think I could handle that! So we picked grapes for an hour or two then they start pouring wine and playing music and we start stomping!

You literally take off you shoes, roll up your pants and get in a vat of grapes and squish them with your toes. It’s quite the experience. The juice goes well past your ankles and up your calves and when you’ve picked red grapes like we did this year the color of the juice definitely stains your legs. I can’t really explain the feeling of stepping on cold grapes–and stems–and feeling them not only between your toes, but all over your feet! It was warm this year, but in the past I’ve been surprised at how cold the grapes are between your toes. (For the record, they don’t stomp all the grapes, they have a press for the majority of the fruit, but they do bottle the grapes we stomped). I wish we had closer pictures of the action. After you finish stomping they paint your feet and you can put footprints on the back of your t-shirt.

We met a couple who live in Ankeny, but are originally from Kansas. They are relatively new to the area and it was refreshing to hear them talk about how much they like Des Moines and Iowa in general. We think Des Moines is great, but it’s always good to hear it from other people.

(I’m trying to figure out the best way to display multiple images in wordpress, can anyone recommend a good plugin?)