The Pumpkin Patch
Thing 1’s first class field trip brought us to nearby Rufener Hilltop Farms in Mogadore. Sarah actually read her book club book this month so she was unfortunately unable to join us. This meant that I had the kiddos all by myself for the first half of the day. If you don’t count waking up late (all of us), skipping breakfast (all but Thing 1, who ate peanut butter crackers on the go), or sleeping through lunch (Thing 2), we did pretty good.
That is, I had them for four hours and only forgot to feed one of them both meals. In my defense, I was advised against feeding Thing 2 in the car, we made it to the farm on time, and you’ll never find me waking up someone (much less a baby) to eat lunch.
The festivities started out on an odd note when there was some confusion over what tickets we were supposed to be given. I was reminded that some people are not comfortable with things like numbers or counting or…tickets. After some extensive detective work, it was determined that the three of us (one adult, one child, one child with pumpkin) should have five wrist bands (three pink and two green) and four tickets (three yellow and one blue). The following conversation took place:
“Why five bands? There’s only three of us.”
“Pink is for the hay ride and green is for the pumpkins”
“OK, but I only paid for one pumpkin, not two.”
“Right”.
“Right…? OK…so what are the tickets for?”
“The hayride and the pumpkins”
“Oh. But…uh…ok, thanks!”
After freaking out on the giant tractor (photo unavailable), the kids found their new favorite thing in the whole wide world…: an enormous bean pit, with a slide. A sign indicated that entering the barn with the bean pit (among other things) was $2. I asked a worker if this is what the wrist bands were for and my confusion was mirrored right back so I decided not to pursue it and assumed we were good.
It took some work but I managed to get the kids away from the bean pit and onto the hay ride thingy. The plan, as I learned was to ride out into the middle of nowhere and do a corn maze. Then ride out to a different middle of nowhere and pick out a pumpkin.
Journey to the maze
The maze
Pumpkin Picking
On the way to the pumpkin patch I explained my only rule to Thing 1: she can have any pumpkin she wants as long as she can lift it. I’ll carry it but she’s got to be able to pick it up. Those that overheard me immediately adopted similar rules for their families.
The driver asked us for our tickets. He wasn’t really concerned with what the colors meant and advised us to do whatever we wanted. I’m not really sure how Thing 1 had any idea what to do here, but she and her friend set out immediately.
And Thing 2 followed. They discovered an odd pumpkin smiling back at them just before finding a perfect, round, solid, clean(ish), light pumpkin.
It was clearly Thing 2’s new favorite thing as you can see in her transition from blah to mine:
Fortunately, they did not leave us in the middle of nowhere and took us back to the entrance where we dropped off our stuff to the car and went back for some more play.
They had a little petting zoo with some goats, sheep, pigs, donkeys, and a cow.
Unfortunately, they were all afraid of Thing 2’s happy squealing so there was no petting. Also, there wasn’t a worker around and so I wasn’t very excited about losing an arm or getting kicked across the field or something. As a city dweller, that’s what I assume will happen without a trained professional reassuring me every four seconds that they won’t hurt us. Maybe it’s easier at a zoo, too, because the animals aren’t in line to be eaten. A tasty animal is an unpredictable animal, that’s what I always say.
And of course we had to hit up the bean pit again before we left.
I bribed Maya for that shot. Don’t judge me.
1 comment
Sarah said on 2010-10-05
Loved this post, babe :) I’m glad you guys had a fun time at the pumpkin patch! I know it means a lot to the girlies when they have special Daddy time :D
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