Pumpkin Patch 2017

Yesterday we spent the day getting into the Fall and Halloween spirit with a visit to a pumpkin patch. Like a few years ago, we visited McClelland's Dairy near Petaluma just an hour north of San Francisco. We picked pumpkins and gourds to decorate at home, met farm animals, went on a tractor ride, shot mini pumpkins out of a cannon, played on bounce houses, walked through a haunted house and buried each other in the corn pit.

Here's a look at our fun day on the farm...

Pumpkin Patch 2015

Now that the Halloween madness and the girls are back to regular school hours (they had short days plus a day off last week) I'm playing catch up on the blog. Today I'm sharing our visit to the pumpkin patch from a few weeks back.

Our annual visit to a pumpkin patch is always greatly anticipated by Ava and Lola. They love choosing their own pumpkins to carve for Halloween and they can't wait for the other fun activities that await them at the pumpkin patch. In the past we've visited Petaluma Pumpkin patch (you can see our previous visits here and here) but this year we thought we'd try somewhere different for a change. We still wanted to head north as the landscape around there is so pretty so we decided to choose another pumpkin patch near Petaluma. After checking out the websites of several pumpkin patches in the area we settled on McClelland's Dairy. The girls were pretty excited about one particular activity that McClelland's Dairy featured that the other's didn't. The pumpkin blaster! 

As excited as we were for the pumpkin blaster, we decided to hit the field and choose our pumpkins first before heading to the activity area. Lola wasn't too picky about her pumpkins and pretty much just chose the first two that she came along - which admittedly, were pretty good pumpkins. Ava, however, had to check as many pumpkins as possible before deciding which two she would like. Mathilde just tried (unsuccessfully!) to pick up every pick up every pumpkin she saw. And she refused to wear shoes. Oh my were her feet filthy by the end of the day!

Pumpkin Patch 2014

A few weekends back we visited Petaluma Pumpkin Patch to pick our pumpkins for Halloween.

Ava and Lola had been looking forward to visiting the pumpkin patch for such a long time. It's one of their favourite things every year. This year we had our friends Kylie, Joel and Sebastian visiting from Australia. We were excited to share such an American institution with them. Plus it was Mathilde's first visit to a pumpkin patch and therefore a huge photo opportunity!

Fall Harvest Time: Pumpkins

Less than 10 days until Halloween so it's time to get cracking with the preparations. The first thing on our list? Carving jack-o'lanterns! But before we can carve said jack-o'lanterns we needed to find the perfect pumpkins for the job.

Last year we arrived in America less than a week before Halloween. By the time we got over our jetlag and were somewhat settled in we had little time to go all out with the Halloween preparations. We made sure to carve jack-o'lanterns, however as we had left it so late we were left with the dregs of the season's pumpkins at our local supermarket. This year I was determined that we wouldn't let that happen again. We decided to get in a little earlier with the pumpkin selection and rather than just walking downstairs to our local Trader Joe's supermarket we hopped in a Zipcar and headed to the countryside. Dotted all around the countryside at this time of year are pumpkin patches. You don't need to travel very far out of an urban area to find them. In fact, there are even pumpkin patches within cities. I thought we'd go for the slightly more authentic option and get out of the city.

So on Saturday we headed to Petaluma, almost an hour north of San Francisco. Here we visited Petaluma Pumpkin Patch for our Fall harvest time fun. We started by selecting our pumpkins: Two medium sized pumpkins, three mini pumpkins and one swan gourd - a gourd that looks like, you guessed it, a swan!

Here's a look at our day of pumpkin fun!

Rolling pumpkins is easier than carrying them when you're little