pumpkin madness

Today we went to a pumpkin farm - something we try to do every October but this time it was a good opportunity to meet up with another mother and her two children who are close in age to Megan and Calum, who we met through the local homeschoolers' email group. The farm we went to was incredibly commercialized - I guess they only have a four-to-six-week window every year to make profits for the whole year and they are really going all out to draw in the customers. The pumpkin-picking experience included two "corn mazes" (this seems to be a local phenomenon, because I had never heard of them before moving here - basically they just grow a field of corn with paths cut through it), a wagon ride complete with country & western music, a live band on a stage with two poor people dressed up in corn and pumpkin costumes dancing and singing along to the music, and of course, a trip out to the field to try and find just the right pumpkin in the middle of all the mud and vines and smashed-up pumpkins.

It was actually kind of a surreal and un-farm-like experience - I mean there were cows and hens, and such, but you feel more like you are visiting a bizarre alternate universe where adults dress up in weird orange cowboy/cowgirl costumes and act like wired children. I was trying to think up a "help wanted" ad for employees at this farm. "Wanted: Musicians, greeters, ticket takers and parking assistants for pumpkin farm/amusement park. Successful applicants will be relentlessly cheerful, able to tolerate spending hours singing outdoors on cold, rainy days, enjoy corralling endless groups of noisy daycare and school children, and know all the worlds to stereotypical "country" songs. No farming knowledge needed."

At any rate, the kids enjoyed themselves and somewhere in the middle of all this chaos we picked out three very nice pumpkins and got to connect with some very nice new friends. Now I think I'll go play some mindless video games to try and get "Oh My Darlin' Clementine" out of my head.