Anyway, it was a real true pumpkin patch. No frippery, no bells and whistles. No corn kernel ball pits or hay rides or corn mazes. You went out there with a wheelbarrow and picked out pumpkins--snapping them off the vine--while avoiding snakes of course.
It was really fun. We really enjoyed it. When we moved to RI we tried to find a similar experience, but the best we found was a place that consisted of a hay ride that took us to a spot where somebody had placed bunches of pumpkins in a row for people to choose from. It was fun, but just not as "organic" an experience.
Anyway, of course this all leads to what we do for pumpkins now, right? Well, this is New Mexico where things don't just grow, so it's not like there are pumpkin patches right and left. Max's first grade teacher's husband is the Pastor of a church on the way to downtown. His teacher loved him and as a result of that we loved her of course. Anyway, every Halloween they have a big pumpkin sale there to benefit their youth program.
So after all that story what is comes down to is that here, we go to a church, walk around rows of pumpkins somebody laid out for us to shop in, and just buy some.
And that's gotta just be ok. The kids love it anyway. Especially Sandy was excited because he never remembered doing it before.
Love the juxtaposition between Max's MEGA pumpkin and the teeny ones behind him. He always has to pick a huge one.
Sometimes it's just a blessing to be able to find a time to do something like pumpkin buying and jack-o-lantern making--even if the time has to be planned and scraped out. It's stuff like this that kids remember. (old links to pumpkin posts, just for fun: http://lifekunst.blogspot.com/2008/10/pumpity-pumpkin-patch.html http://lifekunst.blogspot.com/2007/10/punkin-patch.html)
2 comments:
Even if it's just going to a church, it still beats just buying them at the store. And that place looks like a regular pumpkin wonderland. Sandy will remember it as acres and acres or pumpkins I'm sure. I like how they have them sorted by size, and then even have them on the window ledges.
I can just feel that sticker-y stem Max is wrestling with, pressed against my own palm. We don't go to the field, either, though I guess we could have at Finches'. Now, there's a farmer whose grandfather came out here with Brigham Young, and he grows the pumpkins out on his acres out by the lake (acres that have been taken for the new road to the airport, which makes everybody mad). Every year, he has his entire family - extended - like, almost 100 people come to his yard for a dinner of chili soup and other fall things. Then they pile on a huge old tractor pulled wagon, then the go out to the fields and everybody picks pumpkins. Sadly, the best ones go down to Springville with his grandchildren who sell them. But many end up on his driveway on 6th south. I love that guy. And that's where we have gotten ours for three or four years now. But he's old and thinks he won't do that anymore. This year, I had a little pumpkin party with the $13 worth of about twenty four pumpkins I bought from him and had everybody take some home after dinner. Made me happy.
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