We made our annual trek to the Eckert’s pumpkin patch this weekend, in search of the “Great Pumpkin.” Actually, four great pumpkins. And if you want to be really particular, five, because the children insisted that we get a small pumpkin for Baby, too!
For some reason, even though the weather was beautiful, they were using buses to shuttle happy pumpkin and apple pickers back and forth to the field and the orchard. They were offering, however, a tractor ride just to tour the farm, so we started with that. It ended up being a pretty long ride, and we saw some parts of the farm that we don’t normally get to see, so it was really fun.
Along the way, we saw some baby fruit trees, (I have no idea if they’re peach trees or apple trees at this point), growing and waiting to become part of the orchard.
We also saw some baby Christmas trees, just waiting to grow up and fulfill their Christmas destiny.
It’s a beautiful farm, complete with several ponds, and a beautiful farmhouse. It’s obvious why the family originally chose that property for their home!
After the tractor ride, we headed for the bus to go to the pumpkin patch. This was another long ride, and we saw some areas of the farm I’m 100% certain I didn’t even know were there. It was a kind of weird way to ride out to the field–the only other time we’ve gone by bus was on a cold, damp day–but it was still fun “sightseeing” along the way!
The pumpkin picking itself didn’t really go so well. Turkey and Bunny did finally find pumpkins that suited them, (each was just over 13 pounds!), but there were no pumpkins small enough for Moose and Ladybug. Our rule is that you have to pick a pumpkin that you can carry, and while they can usually find some under five pounds in the field, for some reason that didn’t work this year. So they had to choose their pumpkins in the country store, but to be honest, I don’t think they really cared.
It was a fun day, and the weather was beautiful. The sun may have been a little too bright, though–I couldn’t get a picture of all four of them where somebody didn’t have his or her eyes closed, no matter which direction I had them facing!
