A Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

Actually, it was a trip to an apple orchard with a pumpkin patch. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this place before. Started with an orchard and a simple farm market. Now, the place is packed on Saturdays in September and October. They’ve added a grill with brats, hot dogs and a few other things and an indoor cafe with sweets and other things. They’ve expanded their pumpkin patch and had to create a bigger space for parking due to all the Saturday traffic. It is nice to see a local farm doing so well.

Oh, they also see flowers in the spring so we typically visit them in the spring as well. Last year was not a great year for anyone but it sure looks like they are making up for it this year.

We don’t carve the pumpkins but we discovered that our friends the raccoons just love pumpkins. Specifically, they eat a little hole through the skin and then scoop out all the seeds and guts. We’ve put one pumpkin out just to see but the rest are in the garage waiting for us to get closer to Halloween.

In past years, we’ve shopped at the already picked section but they created a new pumpkin patch that was just a few steps from the grill so we spontaneously decided to just go pick a few. Fortunately, they had wagons available which meant that you didn’t have to carry your picks back from the patch. The down side is that it just made it that much easier to pick more to fill up the wagon. Perhaps that was the idea all along.

So we made our way down the rows and then she said “that one looks good”. I made her go stand next to it because “that one” just wasn’t enough information to go on. Trying to get it off the vine made me wish I carried a knife but I managed to twist it off. Then we got four more just to fill up the wagon. If you’ve ever touched a pumpkin vine, you’ll know they have lots of little hairs covering them. Over the years, I’ve seemingly developed super sensitive skin so my arms are now covered with red blotches. Its the price you have to pay.

The only other real downside was that we were having a summer/fall day. The temperatures were hovering around 80 which really didn’t provide a good fall vibe. Plus standing in a pumpkin patch with the sun beaming down on your can get a bit uncomfortable.

We did also stop at the farm market to get some cider. To me, cider is the best thing about fall. You can keep your pumpkin spice flavored everything. Give me the cider. I’m not a big fan of apples but grind them into cider and I’m totally on board.

So the weather still says summer but today we had our first real fall experience. Or autumn if that is your preferred name for this season.