Pumpkins for All!

It seems like everyone has been doing blog posts lately about their excursions to the pumpkin farm, so now here's ours. :-)

We realized that, now that we have a child, we need to make an actual effort when it comes to holidays. No more forgoing decorating and just sitting around eating Halloween candy by ourselves - nope! Now we're getting FESTIVE! We know that holidays are a lot more fun when you "get into them," so for Weston's sake, we're trying to do just that. (At least to the extent that we are capable... finding him a costume, baking sugar cookies with orange and black sprinkles, carving pumpkins, and going trick-or-treating. We're focusing on baby steps here. We'll get to the advanced stuff like turning our home into a Haunted House later.) And we also know that holidays are a lot more fun when a cute, happy little person gets all excited for them. So, we're in for a fun holiday season this year. ...Okay, so Weston has no idea that Halloween or anything else is even coming up, but still, we can pretend that he cares. :-)

So, on Thursday, in an effort to secure pumpkins for said carving activity, we drove out to Underwood Family Farms for their harvest festival. This friendly family greeted us at the entrance! (Apparently they were all flattened in a freak accident. Very sad.):

There was country music blaring when we entered (Tim shuddered a little), and eventually we discovered the rip-roaring stage show:
We checked out a number of tractors and farm equipment that they had on display, and Tim took a bunch of pictures of them for art/machinery/design studies (he's always doin' crazy things like that, that artist husband of mine):
This photo is for my dad... I imagine that he might have ridden around on one of these babies when he was growing up on the farm:
Then we tried our hand at the Corn Maze. We were initially exuberant and prideful of our smart human brains that could certainly conquer the stupid corn:
After 10 minutes, though, we realized that the corn is a lot cleverer than it looks, so we retraced our steps back to the entrance:
There were a bamillion pumpkins at the farm - big pumpkins:
... and little pumpkins:
... and some beautiful but strange stalked pumpkins:

... and pumpkin displays:
... and some more pumpkin displays (I think this one is an artist's representation of the Great Pumpkin-Tractor War of 1927):
Weston sat atop an especially ginormous pumpkin:
Look at the cute little farm boy!
Then we took him to another tractor for yet another photo op:

Just precious... in a country sort of way:
Then we visited the farm animals. These creatures, which I'm assuming are ponies or miniature horses or something (probably should've read the sign), were very friendly:
The cow was also very friendly. I think her name was Daisy. Or Bessie. (It's always either Daisy or Bessie):
Hayride time! I insisted upon the hayride. It's not a harvest festival unless you do the hayride. Period.
This was the best picture that I managed to get of Weston and Tim during the bumpy hayride. Weston was very wiggly and unsteady -- I think he'd been sniffing too much hay:

A final photo op with some pumpkins:
( I don't think he was very fond of the scratchy hay on his softy little legs):
And we finally picked out our pumpkins!! Here's our little pumpkin family:
I love me a man with a wagon full of pumpkins. Woooooo-hoo!

Before we left the farm, we purchased some pumpkin butter from their country store. Then this morning, I baked scones and served them with the butter. SO GOOD!!! Seriously, pumpkin butter is like spreadable pumpkin pie. It just does not get any better than that. :-)