It’s the fragrance of fall.

Frosty nights and orange, amber and crimson days make our taste buds crave pumpkin spice.

Great-grandma was right; nothing satisfies like an apple cinnamon pie still warm from the oven.

A golden-brown pumpkin pie handsomely laced with nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger is a treat fit for a king.

Karen Rose Wils

It’s October and everything is pumpkin pie spices from now right through to Thanksgiving.

Coffee, donuts, lattes, candies, and even wines are all cinnamon and spice flavored now. Spicey-scented candles and air fresheners smell so good you’d almost swear that someone was baking a pie somewhere in the house!

But the warm and wonderful aroma of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves is not a new thing. Pumpkin spices may sell a lot of products like now, but our ancestors knew the value of them as well.

No U.P. homestead pantry was complete without these four spices. Grandma had special jars and containers to keep her precious spices fresh in.

Sugar and spice were highly valued commodities. They were important for cooking and baking and even more important for medicine.

They were imported from the far east. The general store and the small neighborhood grocery stores stocked spices. Family recipes called for just the right amount of spice.

When someone had a tooth ache cloves were used. When someone had a belly ache ginger root was needed.

Many of these “home remedies” have been proven true. Cinnamon has antibiotic, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Ginger may help with nausea, weight loss and lower blood sugar. Cloves are antimicrobial and are believed to promote good bone health.

Most of us think that pumpkin spice comes in a little red jar that says “McCormick” on it but spices come from afar.

Cinnamon comes from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and is now cultivated in South America. Cinnamon has been in demand since 2,000 B.C. It comes from the bark of a tree.

Ginger first appeared in the southern parts of ancient China. Marco Polo brought ginger roots to Europe.

Nutmeg comes from the ground seeds of a tree native to Indonesia.

Cloves are aromatic flower buds from a tree native to the Muluku Islands.

So, when you sip that pumpkin spice coffee or bite into that apple pie, just think of all the miles and all of the helpful hands those spices went through to make our autumn taste awesome!