Meet You at the Pumpkin Patch

Especially for abuelos...


Last night, after another nail-biter of a Notre Dame victory, we went to the Pumpkin Patch at Lane Family Farms. This "little" farm has been around for over 100 years, and is nestled right in (the next) town, not far from Costco and Home Depot.

You wouldn't have known!

We got there and found pumpkins, pumpkins, everywhere...but also a corn maze, farm animals, and a hay pit. A hay pit? We'll get to that later.

After walking around and looking at the animals (they were all just "pet" farm animals except for the Belgian draft horse, who does work), Pixie convinced us to head to the corn maze. I'm not sure if she ran in and we had to go in for a rescue, or if there was actual mutual agreement...maybe reluctant agreement is the best way to express it. Anyway, we went in the entrance and almost immediately my hopes of trying my maze-theory out were dashed.


Sometime years ago I read how to methodically find your way out of any maze and had actually been thinking, "Allright! I finally get to try that out!" (Let's just skip the nerdiness part of that).

However, three small, very excited children do not mix with always staying to the right. And that was OK. So we took off at random with great gusto and had a blast.


Wombles loved shrieking, "This way!" running into the dead-ends. Pixie and Bud took turns navigating. J and I took turns chasing the forerunners and bringing up the rear with the straggler.


As we approached the final exit, I was hope-hope-hoping that we were coming out of the exit, and not the entrance again...we were that turned around. YES! Success!

J, Wombles, and Pixie also took a hayride on an antique Studebaker school wagon pulled by a tractor. Bud said it was too loud and hung out at the hay pit.

When he first arrived, there was a little boy who had been waiting for someone to show up. The point of the hay pit is to have hay fights.

The little boy kept running out of the pit. He and Bud were much of a size, but he didn't have the...the...θυμος (thumos) is what comes to mind...because we always use it of Bud. Let's just say the little boy didn't have quite the zeal, energy, or enjoyment that Bud did.

So Bud waited for Wombles to return.

They have walls around to contain the madness.

It's like the WWF of...hayfighting.

I did not get a single photo of this that wasn't blurry.

Soon after this, a small crowd of children joined in. Probably the highlight of the evening for J and me was when we overheard Bud talking (emphatically, of course) to a boy easily twice his age:

"Hey! That's my sister. You cannot throw straw at her. She is MY sister."

This was cool for several reasons. We love that Bud wanted to stand up for Pixie and protect her. Pixie, of course, was throwing straw, but Bud did not care: No-one could throw straw back at her. The big kid actually did what Bud said...which was interesting...although J says he later saw the big kid handing straw to Bud, who then threw it at Pixie. Now, that's just hilarious.