Pumpkin Picking Fun

Saturday the kids and I went to Family Tree Farm with my parents, my sister and her boyfriend.
 

We had a blast.  The people who worked there were so friendly and helpful.   The price was reasonable too, it was $20 for a family, and the pumpkins were .40 cents a pound.  I can't say enough good things about the place.  We have a tradition of going pumpkin picking with my parents and sister each year.  We've been going to various places and some have been better than others.  I just googled 'pumpkin picking PA' and found this link to all kinds of places.  From there I found the Family Tree Farm website which told me more about the place and we decided to give it a try.  I'm so glad we did.

There was lots to do besides just picking the perfect pumpkin.  They had a corn maze which was not too hard.  We've been to others that we couldn't find our way out in over an hour and exited through the entrance.  This was perfect for us and it only took us about 20 minutes to get through it.  

They also had straw bale tube slides that the kids loved to play in, on and through.

Corn pools were also a bit hit.  While the Babes preferred to transfer corn from one pool to another, the older kids jumped right in.

There was also pumpkin painting, evergreen seedling planting and apple slinging.  The apple slinging was by  far our favorite.
 


This apple slinging was so much fun, I'm thinking we need to make one of these for our backyard.  We do have a large field behind us to sling things into.

Here's the Spencinator using the sling shot

 And Sweetie Pie tried too.

Even I got in on the action.  I found that by sitting down on the hay bales you could really get the apple to fly.

 The Babes got to try it too (with some help)

 But the most successful apple slinger was my mom.

She got the closest to the target when she hit that piece of wood sticking up right behind the bull's eye, and her apple exploded upon impact.

And now for the real reason we went to this farm.  To find the perfect pumpkin.
We took a tractor ride out to the field

They had pink pumpkins.  They did something special with the seeds and they turned out pink.  They actually looked more peach than pink to me.

They also had some pale blue/green pumpkins which were sort of neat.

The Babes preferred this little gourd.

In the end, we came home with these, plus the Babes' little gourd:

We are going to paint some and carve some.

What fall traditions do you have?
Anyone else go pumpkin picking to different places each year?

Thanks for stopping by,
Christa

P.S.  If you're a Downton Abbey fan, Season 3, episode 6 can be found here.  Oh, it just keeps getting better and better.