It's the Great Pumpkin (Patch) Charlie Brown

Today we spent the day at the Louisburg Cider Mill and the KC Pumpkin Patch with family. I was in Squash Heaven, of course, and brought home way too many. We started in the morning with the Cider Mill. Adorable Baby Niece couldn't get over how they squished up the apples to make the cider, she kept making us go back into the building to watch the machine.



First the apples were washed and floated toward the mill.


Then the apples were squished.


And then--PRESTO--apple cider.

We wandered around the cider store for a little bit. They had everything apple you could imagine--cider, spices, caramel, apple butter.


Emma found some pumpkins that were just her size.


And I found a cave woman gourd!

After a tasty lunch (thanks Grandma!) we headed over to the KC Pumpkin Patch in Gardner. It was like, a little Pumpkin amusement park. They had a barrel train, lots of slides, a "haunted barn" (which was a little silly, but still fun in a kooky kind of way), a petting zoo--oh yeah, and there was a pumpkin patch too. The best part though, was the PUMPKIN CANNON.


With the press of a button, this cannon would fire pumpkins through the air into a nearby field where you could see the very satisfying splat they made when they landed.

We also tried the "Chunkin' Punkin'" which catapulted baby pumpkins at targets out in the field. The target we were aiming for--a life-size wooden dairy cow!


They also had this smaller pumpkin gun that allowed for a little more targeting by the person shooting. But I still couldn't hit the cow!


Did I mention that I was in squash heaven? There were all kinds of gourds and different shapes and sizes of pumpkins. Some year when we have more space (and a big truck) I think we'll have to go back and get a giant pumpkin. But for now we settled on this one for a regular pumpkin.


But with all the variety, it was hard to pick just one.






So we brought home three! Combined with what we picked out at the Cider Mill we added five very cool vegetables to our (ok, my) collection.