Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

10/13/2019 Davis, CA

For the last, I don’t know, five years or so we have taken the grandkids to a local pumpkin patch to get a few more pumpkins and for them to have the experience of walking out into the field to pick the ones that “call out to them”.  Each year the operation at the patch has gotten a little bigger.  When we started going there they had the field of pumpkins, a small corral of farm animals that you could get close to and pet, a small maze, and a tractor that pulled a train of little cars designed to look like cows.

This year the show was bigger than ever, covering three or four times as much ground, with everything you would expect to see at a county fair.  Refreshment stands, face painting, big mazes, little mazes, long lines to get on the tractor train, and lots and lots of folks bringing out the kids, just like us.  It is no longer what Linus in the Peanuts comic strip would have called a “sincere pumpkin patch” the kind the Great Pumpkin would visit to deliver goodies to all the true believers.

Call me old and stodgy who is still a kid at heart but that’s what I would prefer too.  Don’t get me wrong, the owners try hard to take care of the crowd, there’s lots of very polite help when you need it and generally the operation is well staffed but it’s big.

Here’s part of the back end of the parking lot,

I guess you need a return for your effort and investment and it looks like they’re getting it,

The quonset tent, which, I think, is for reservations only, birthdays, etc.

An old hearse driven, of course, by skeletons,

Here’s the white pumpkin and gourd section,

And the orange one,

I think we’ll look for something more sincere next year.

And that’s what’s new today.