Fall is here

The first day of fall arrived with a cold rain. I love fall, although I will miss the warmth of summer. Fall always makes me miss the old days of the Country Place. It's the fruit stand that my family owned and I worked at for 7 years. We had pumpkin festivals every October with hay rides, petting zoo, horse rides, hay maze, bobbing for apples and of course acres of pumpkins. It was always a ton of work to organize the festivals, but always enjoyable. My siblings and I (all four of us) would get friends to come help with the festivals, even getting Grandpa to drive tractor, then have a pizza party and bonfire at the end of the day. After the last festival, we would go 4x4 in our trucks, tractors, and four wheelers in the fields, smashing pumpkins and running over the corn. We also did pumpkin tours for preschool and kindergarten kids. We would have 2000 kids come through in the month of October, and it was fun to teach then about how pumpkins grew.

Now that my kids are this age, I wish we still had the farm and fruit stand. They would have loved the pumpkin festivals. We visit a local farm that does something similar, but it's not the same as having your own.

I was asked to help with a school fall festival, and I jumped at the chance to relive the old days. I am realizing though that it's not so easy without the farm. Things that we had on hand, small bales of hay, pumpkins, cornstalks, aren't so easy to get when you have to ask for or buy.

So here's a lovely example of a fall day at the Country Place. I miss those days, but not that outfit! Your gotta give me credit though, it was 1991!