Sweetberry Farm Trip

Sommer went to Sweetberry Farm (aka the pumpkin patch) on October 30, 2008. I was amazed at all of the activities they had for the kids. I was expecting to go, pick out, possibly decorate a pumpkin, but no, three hours later we were finally done. The first activity they did was make a scarecrow. The kids stuffed the shirt and pants, then the worker stapled them together. It was a surprise to Ms. Starkey (Sommer's teacher - the tall, skinnny one with the school shirt and white hair) that she was given the scarecrow to take back to school. Since there was a school fundraiser going on at the time, a huge garage sale, we figured it would be best suited to help with the advertising of the garage sale outside.

The next event was the hay rack ride (to us easterners it is called a hay ride). The hay rack ride took everyone over to the corn maze. I guess they have two, one for the "big" kids that is really large and people can get lost in, and the "little" one that only little kids can get lost in. The worker was there to make sure all of the little ones made it through without any trauma.













Once the maze was completed, they split the kids into two teams. Two people from each team had to race with the wagons through the tunnel to a pile of pumpkins (no, sadly, there was really no pumpkin picking - only picking out an already picked pumpkin), where they picked which one they thought was best, threw (literally - needless to say, some pumpkins did not make it back in one piece) it in the wagon, and ran back to the team. Here is the beginning of the "race" where everyone is gearing up to go, and cheering each other on.

Sommer's turn - and she's off!!On the way back, with her pumpkin in tow. Where's the other guy?


Now, last year, they brought the pumpkins home with sticker faces on them. This year, could they be that neat? No. Picture a picnic table with a trough down the middle. In the trough are cups with different color paints in them. Now add the 13 children all trying to paint their pumpkins, and their parents around them. Not a pretty picture. There was paint everywhere - on clothes, in hair, on faces, arms, etc.

However, Sommer did finally manage to paint her pretty rainbow around the pumpkin, with a white cloud painted on the top of the pumpkin, and she had me paint a bird by the rainbow.
















As the pumpkins were drying, each child was given a husk of Indian corn. The kids then put their husks down this grinder where it took all the corn off of the husk. The corn and husk were then collected and brought to a table where they made a fall decoration with it.

















Now the kids were herded over to a new contraption. This was two troughs put together, going different directions. At the end of each trough was a bucket of water and a pump. The kids were again divided into two teams and a plastic pumpkin placed in front of the water pump on each trough. The kids had to pump the water as fast as they could in order to get their pumkin to the end of the trough first. Sommer won her first go, then lost her second. It was a lot harder to do than it looked!



After all of this, the kids fed the goats and pet the horses. Then they were finally allowed to sit and eat a snack, and the farm brought them each a scoop of home made ice cream. It was a lot of fun, and very tiring!