Pumpkins and Corn Mazes

Today was such a full and beautiful day.  It was a good day, and you can see the smiles above as we made it to a pumpkin farm on a crisp, wonderful fall day.

Eight squillion other people had the same idea, but it wasn't the same madness that was Ellijay a few weekends ago.  In fact, we pretty much expected Burt's Pumpkin Farm to be the pumpkin farm madhouse that it was.  You can see plenty of people here, but there were even more than this picture suggests.

And that was okay today.  You can see Mommy and Nana here, inspecting the gourds, and shaking them like maracas.  We walked around the pumpkin farm a bit, looking at all the different varieties of pumpkins, the different shapes, sizes, colors and patterns of all the fall harvest.

Nana was even willing to poke her head through the little holes here in this stand-up.  Madison used to do this all the time, but she was more than happy to just take the picture today.  Speaking of taking pictures, here's one of the photos Madison took this afternoon.

She was using her cell phone to capture images of pumpkins and corn and the farm in general, moving about the harvest there like a professional photographer.  As Mommy and Nana explored the farms, Madison would crouch low to take pictures here or there.

One of the places Mommy likes to go is the covered bridge there at Burt's Pumpkin Farm.  It makes for a nice photo shoot, when everyone sticks their heads out the window there.

It was just enough walking around for Nana, and it was invigorating.  Banjo music was playing, and all kinds of toddlers were marching around dressed in orange and green colors for nice photo shoots.  Struggling dads were doing their best to push wheelbarrows filled with ginormous pumpkins, and the smell of fresh country food hung in the air.   

Nana had a great time and really enjoyed the trip with us.  All of us enjoyed it, a chance to get out and do something in the spirit of the season.  From what we heard later, this place and our other destination have been doing really well this time around, and you'd have to believe that part of the reason for this is the way the pandemic has kept us all stuck inside for so long, and everyone was out in force, breaking out to enjoy the weather.  Not many people were wearing masks.

Here's Madison this year, amongst the pumpkins.  I managed to find a spot where you couldn't see anyone behind her.  We try to take a picture of Madison with the pumpkins every year, this going back to 2008 when she first arrived as part of our family.  She used to be just barely taller than some of these pumpkins you see her towering over now.  

Here's another photo she took this afternoon, doing something she likes to do quite a bit.  She loves the depth of field shots, blurry foregrounds and areas of focus in the center.  The composition of this one is very interesting.

And here's my little pumpkin, holding a little pumpkin.  Mommy has been quite strained lately, so this was a nice visit today for her as well.  And I can't emphasize how perfect the weather was today, with the sun out but a nice chill in the air.  It wasn't breezy at all, but in fact, just absolutely a perfect fall day.

This photo sort of captures how many people were there at Burt's, and that's okay.  We couldn't get any pictures of all of us by ourselves amongst a sea of pumpkins, or anything like that.  But that's just fine - we were out and just loving the day, and everyone else was doing the same, showing one another grace and just having the best time during this season.

Here's another photo Madison shot of a flat, green pumpkin there.  She's got quite a great collection of photos already, and I'll have to see about a way of keeping the collection together.  Maybe we can even put together a "best of" booklet or something like that.

I took this photo above, as the light coming down on the pumpkins was interesting to me.  I liked the contrast between dark and light here, the brilliant oranges in this photo.  And I took this one below, because I spotted Madison peeking through.

It's funny because you'd almost pass right by this picture without seeing her if not for the fact that someone told you she was in it.  As Nana and Mommy walked about, Madison and I were taking pictures of different things.  Here's another one that Madison took.

This is a great shot of those big orange pumpkins, all lined up beside each other.  Each one weighs about as much as Madison does, and my back is hurting trying to imagine lifting something like that!

Here's another photo I took under the sheltered area where some of the smaller pumpkins are all piled up.  These white ones are beautiful.  All pumpkins are beautiful to me, but I think that's because of my birthdate and favorite time of year!

Mommy and Nana together here, mother and daughter.  Nana enjoyed the walk amongst the orange pumpkins, but we weren't quite done with the pumpkin patches for the day.

Our next stop was Bradleys Pumpkin Patch, a picturesque little farm there, and the kindest people you could ever meet.  We go there to buy our pumpkins, as the family who owns this place volunteer at our church, and are always so sweet to Madison.  In fact, today they gave Madison a free pair of earrings from their little store inside, and they got me something I can't wait to have each season:  a muscadine slushy!

Here's Madison and Mommy seated in a nice place in the shade there while I was looking around for the perfect pumpkin.  I actually found a really good one here fairly quickly, one with a unique stem.  I'm not sure yet what I'll carve, and in fact I might get another pumpkin and do a couple different carvings.  I'm just so into that sort of thing each year!

Madison took this picture at the farm there, a nice composition.  She was doing a bit of exploring with her cell phone, taking pictures of pumpkins and more.  That's when Tony drove up from his hay ride.

He hopped off the tractor and made sure Madison got those earrings, and was so happy to see we came this way to visit him.  We told him we'd never miss it!  He's been working as a parking lot attendant at the church since the early nineties, and he's said he loves pointing people to the church.  Always, always he comes up to Madison and compliments her on her purse and does his best to get her to smile.  He's been doing that since Madison first arrived at the church over ten years ago. 

It's a nice set-up they have there, and it's a bit quieter than the massive enterprise that Burt's has become.  Still, they are doing well at Bradley's, and from what I understand, they are doing three times as well as they did last year.  That's a good sign.

Bradley is seen here talking with Nana, who was basking in the sun there.  Bradley was a kid at Kidpak not long ago, and the farm was named after him.  He's got his own pumpkin patch now, and he's been doing very well with it.  He was so kind to her, giving her a mini-pumpkin, and giving one to Madison as well.  They're currently next to the other pumpkins we purchased from the patch, resting on our fireplace right now.

Madison was sitting a spell on the rocking chair at the front porch for a while, and Daddy was slurping down that muscadine slurpy.  We got a bottle of muscadine cider as well, something to take home for later.  Nana gave it a try and wasn't huge about it at first, but I think she came around.

Here the girls are playing a game of pumpkin checkers, the end of a nice family time together.  I was inside getting a Bradley's Farm Sasquatch t-shirt, one I'm wearing now as I type this!  Afterwards, the four of us made our way back home to the house, and ate a little bit of food there rather hastily because immediately after this, Madison and I had an appointment with a corn maze!

We were celebrating our friend Isaac's accomplishment of graduating from college, but also doing something super seasonal, so we agreed to head up to Jaemor's Farm and do that corn maze up there.  The thing is, you can't do just the corn maze.  When you pay for admission, it's the kind of admission where you can't just do the one thing.  You have to do the other things.  And that was okay for the evening, because we were off and doing the other things they have there.  We've done much of it before when Madison was a bit younger.  But the apple cannons have definitely been updated:

Look at Madison ready to fire off this monster!  You put the apple in the slot, use the loading switch, and then press the button to fire off the cannon at all these targets.

Madison was enjoying firing off these apples.  Daddy hit that Big Foot Hulk in the distance there and right afterwards there was a lot of cheering from folks around.  I wasn't about to admit to anyone that I wasn't aiming for that and hit it by accident!

Because we were going to get our money's worth, we saw the kids area where there were tricycles, and by gum, if there wasn't an age limit, we'd hop on those too!  It was crazy with all of us trying to get on these tiny tricycles, but it was funny.

We did a the big slide after that, something else largely for just kids.  But why not?  We even did the rubber duck races that we did a few years ago too, the ones where you use a water pump to send enough water down a pipe, racing your floating rubber ducky to the end.  We even stopped at the petting zoo to feed the goats.  They were stuffed from eating all day, some of them doing their best to eat what was given, but we weren't able to convince them to eat too much by the end of it.  Them goats was full!

Anyway, by this point, the Smith family arrived, and it was time to venture into the corn maze!  Madison actually live-streamed the entire event, and we have a recording of it on the computer - it took us about a half-hour to make it through the entire maze.

There are two types of corn maze people:  those who follow a map, and those who don't.  We didn't follow a map last year, and it took a while.  It was fun that way, actually.  We were using a map previously, and when Madison was younger, that sort of made sense to make it a more brief experience.  This year we followed the map again, as some of the group were on a time limit, and I have to say although we made it through rather quickly, it's kind of fun getting super lost in a corn maze!

Regardless, this time around, it was getting dark by the time we got out of there, and also a bit colder.  We were tired from the super long day, and it actually worked out this time that we got out of that corn maze when we did.  We had a great time, separating from time to time only to rejoin each other, running around, calling out "Marco!" from time to time, to see if anyone would respond "Polo!"  Sometimes we'd race ahead and hide, jumping out to scare those catching up, or sometimes we'd just stop for a while to rest or talk, or read some sign posted there in the midst of the maze.

In the end, it was a super fun evening.  And it was a super fun day.  We did so much today that it didn't take long to get to sleep when we got home.  We shared our exploits with Mommy and Nana, who were watching a few of the "Night at the Museum" movies.  Church is tomorrow, so we got to bed as soon as we could, reading the devotional, and finally finishing "The Wizard of Oz."  We were praying tonight, thanking God for all that happened today.  It was a good day, a full fall day, and a really wonderful one.