Pumkinpalooza

Our Saturday trip to the Pumpkin Patch was an entertaining spectacle. I knew the part about the kids playing with pumpkins would be good, but the scope of the pumpkin enterprise was more than I expected.

I thought the pumpkin patch would be a grass field with some pumpkins and a hay ride that probably wouldn't be necessary to get to the pumpkins.

When we pulled up to the pumpkin patch and saw a full-on pumpkin festival, I was positively giddy:





In hindsight, I don't know why Heather would have suggested we drive 45 minutes to go to pile of pumpkins in a grass patch with nothing else. But really, what do 15 month old kids know? It's all fun. It's all new. But this was bigger and had a little more potential for fun than I had expected.

When we arrived on the main pumpkin picking grounds, it looked like it was about to rain, so we went straight to the pumpkin patch via the hay ride.


I was pretty happy to discover that the hay ride wasn't just a circle around a pumpkin patch. It was actually necessary for transportation from the barn compound, where we started, to the patch. I'm sure the kids wouldn't have noticed, but a necessary ride in a hay truck is more enjoyable to me than riding around unnecessarily in a circle and acting interested.

Even though I figured our hayride destination was likely to be a bunch of pumpkins unloaded into a grass plot, I was secretly hoping for a real pumpkin field.


Jackpot. We found real pumpkin plants in the field at the end of the hay ride. The pumpkins on the vines were a little picked over and were restocked with non-native pumpkins. But it was still neat to go pumpkin hunting in a real pumpkin patch (for the kids, of course).


One thing I didn't know about pumpkin plants, or at least these pumpkin plants, is that they have thorns. Lots of thorns. Probably more thorns than pumpkins even before the pumpkins were picked.



I can see how the idea of throwing a bunch of pumpkins in the grass and calling it a pumpkin patch caught on after seeing hordes of bloody children screaming and crying while entangled in actual pumpkin patches. Picking pumpkins in bushes full of thorns is an ill conceived idea, at least for little kids.

We kept the kids on the periphery of the patch and I went in a got pumpkins to bring out to the kids. Heather documented the pumpkin picking pretty thoroughly here.

After we got our pumpkins, we took the hay truck back to the barn compound. The kids seemed particularly pleased with their bounty.



There was a food barn next to the gift barn so I ordered us some burgers and fries. While we were sitting in the eating barn, next to the music barn, I noticed that the band in the music barn was playing a lot of Jesus music.


I like Jesus as much as the next guy, but the fire and brimstone anthems just seemed a little weighty for a day at the pumpkin patch. I wasn't really in the mood for contemplating my mortality or spirituality. If I would have had my druthers, I would have gone with some folksy looking people with banjos and washboards. Maybe a tub or a bucket on precussion. That seems more pumpkin pikiny to me.

We had about two or three Jesus songs, and then I heard:

. . . if we play it good and loud
She might get up and dance again.
Ooh, she put her beer down.
Here she comes . . .
honky tonk badonkadonk . . .
Got it goin' on
Like Donkey Kong . . .

And we saw this tenish year old girl who had been called up to dance to honkey tonk badonkadonk.



First we heard all about hell and then we punched our ticket to the place. Holy Lord. I didn't know how filthy country music could be. The singer followed that song up with a nice little country number about adultery. Then, like it never happened, right back to gospel. If I didn't see it, I wouldn't have believed it.