the great pumpkins

grandma and grandpa came by yesterday and took us all out to the pumpkin patch. it's apparently become an annual event and the kids really look forward to it, as the season begins to turn. since it had rained over the weekend, i wasn't sure if our little quest for the orange squash would end up a muddied affair, but it turned out to be a perfect day of stubborn indian summer sunshine.
the folks over at the patch seem to have it all figured out too. come in and park for free on weekdays, but come saturday and sunday it's 10 bucks a carload. throw in all the little rides and activities, and it adds up. but hey, it's for the kids, right?

but the most fascinating part of the whole trip for me was watching the apple cider production. before my very eyes and within a matter of minutes i watched as apples came in from the field, were loaded on to a sorting and cleaning machine, carried up a conveyor belt into a machine that turned them to mush and then pressed all of the juice into a bucket which was then sucked out by a hose into a beautiful stainless holding tank where workers than tapped it straight into gallon jugs. reminded me of the old films mr. rogers used to show us.
and of course we loaded onto the hay wagon and made our trip into the wilds of the back 40 to find our jeweled gourds. each one a prize. and after all their effort lugging these things back to the car (can't have it if you can't carry it) we made the car trip home together and then as my littlest guy pulled his out of the car it dropped on the sidewalk with a painful thud spilling some of its guts out.