In the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, mid-October is unpredictable. The warm, cloudless remnants of summer could extend warmth. Gray-bottomed occlusion from the northwest could drop wet snow on high elevation; the Peaks of Otter and Apple Orchard Mountain north of Bedford can take on white summits, largely melted by the afternoon. Harvest is a daily gamble. When tobacco was a money crop, it was hung to cure for the November–December auctions, making possible a calculation of the year’s hard work and therefore the oracles of the next. For rural families, October brought the birth of winter conceptions, William Alphonso Murrill being one.