We have come to the end of our pumpkin season with bittersweet emotions.  We will miss all of the school children who visited the farm for field trips and all of the families who visited us on our fall weekends.  We have packed up the pumpkin yard and put the tractors in the barn for winter.  Now, we are preparing for Thanksgiving like millions of other people.  This year, there has been much discussion in the media about Black Friday creeping into and becoming Black Thursday.  This prompted me to revisit the origins of Thanksgiving.  According to the History Channel website and our familiar childhood re-enactments at this time of year, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast in 1621.  This is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies.  For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by the individual colonies and states.  However, it wasn't until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held in November.  From that time forth, Thanksgiving was tweaked and finally on December 26, 1941, President Roosevelt signed the legislation making Thanksgiving a national holiday on the fourth (not the last Thursday) in November.  I will not be shopping on Black Thursday or Friday.  I will shop locally on Saturday, Nov. 26th.  Regardless of when you shop, the Devine Family thanks you for your patronage and wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving.  Till next time....Charla Devine