Where the Pumpkins Are!
By Sherri Smith Brown
You’ll find pumpkins of all sizes at pumpkin patches and corn mazes during the fall months. Most are operated by local farm families, who want to share the farm experience as well as a little farm fun with others.
When the leaves take on autumn hues, the air is a little crisper and pumpkins litter farm fields like orange confetti, it’s definitely time for a trip to a pumpkin patch. Pumpkin patches have seriously come into their own since my older children were young. In fact, I’m not sure where you went to visit one back then, but there sure weren’t any advertised in my vicinity. Not so now. Pumpkin patches and corn mazes are all the rage in the fall.
To run a farm these days, it takes a lot of hard work (sweat), patience, love and faith in the weather. You’ll find that a number of farm families want to share their farm experiences and their knowledge about animals and plants and let visitors, especially youngsters, have a good time doing it. Each September and October when the pumpkins are ripe on the vines, many farms open their gates, so to speak, to schoolchildren during the week and the public on the weekends. I’ve taken Brianna to Uncle Bob’s Pumpkin Patch in Coweta County a couple of times and to Ison’s Farm in Fayette County with a preschool group, but there are numerous ones around the state.
Many of these farms have 12-foot-high-or-so corn mazes, the creating of which has become an engineering industry. If you were lucky enough to see one from the air, you might see the farm name spelled out in cursive letters or, perhaps, a scary Halloween face. This year, Southern Belle Farm’s maze pays homage to University of Georgia football sportscaster Larry Munson.
At some farms, you can ride a tractor-drawn hay wagon around the farm’s perimeter, or you might find a petting zoo with ducks, goats, sheep, peacocks, chickens, and turkeys eagerly waiting to be fed by little hands.
In spite of yourself, you can even learn a thing or two about farm life and the great outdoors. At Uncle Bob’s, you can visit the Honeybee Barn to watch a working honeybee colony and try to find the Queen; or discover the biology, physics and chemistry of spinning, dyeing and felting plant and animal fibers at Aunt Jan’s Porch. Uncle Bob’s wife Jan, who calls herself the primary laborer at the farm, is usually there giving the demonstrations herself—between her other chores.
Of course, there are most always gift shops with farm-made items like honey, pumpkin butter, and gourds for sale. And of course, who would want to leave without a pumpkin or two straight from the patch?
Click on pumpkin patches and/or corn mazes here at BG to find one near you. And, as always, let me know about your experience. Was it a bigger treat for the kids—or you?
Tags: Corn Maze, Farms, petting zoo, pumpkin patch