Pumpkin Patch
by Rebecca on 2008-10-12
Yesterday, William and I went to a pumpkin patch. Thereʼs a farm in Marble Falls that we really like, Sweet Berry Farm, where weʼve gone to pick berries before. Itʼs a pretty drive, and itʼs so fun to come home with our spoils and stuff ourselves silly. So, we thought the pumpkin patch would be fun, too. It seemed like a quintessentially Fall thing to do.
It turns out that I had a rather romantic view of pumpkin patches. I thought weʼd be able to go and pick our pumpkins off of the vine in the cool of the day and have a nice picnic in their pavilion. But I was pretty much wrong about everything.
First of all, it was hot! Weʼd had cool, breezy weather with a nice cloud cover all morning, but as soon as we arrived at the farm, the sun came out. OK, it wasnʼt as hot as it was the time we went blackberry picking, and I had sweat rolling down my back, but it was still warmer than I liked it.
Second of all, there were piles of pre-picked pumpkins everywhere. No vines in sight! But they did have more varieties of pumpkins than Iʼd ever seen before, including peanut pumpkins that looked like they had peanut shells glued all over their sides. They were crazy!
Third, there were only about a million people there, mostly little kids. We were pretty much the only people there that didnʼt have at least one munchkin in tow. (Iʼll have to remember this for my child-rearing years: kids like jumping onto piles of pumpkins.) So, we ate our picnic in the hatch of our car, since the pavilion had been overrun by kids painting pumpkins and being painted and stuffing scarecrows.
That said, it was still a nice outing. The drive is pretty, and we did come home with a 12-pound pumpkin that will be finding its way into a pie (or four) one of these days. Our picnic was way fun, and we discovered some amazing new cheeses, including a white cheddar that weʼll throw in some macaroni and cheese later this week, and this soft cheese with cranberries in it.
And the corn maze was pretty fun, because we kept running into different groups who would ask, “Have you found X city?” and we would point them in a certain direction. And William would hear someone shout, “I found X city!!” and we could go running towards it, too. It was all about teamwork. Nothing like getting lost in a scary, big maze to bring out the cooperative side in people. Iʼm sure I could make some gospel applications to this. Maybe for a fireside talk someday!
Happy Fall!