OFT No.2 - Pumpkin Picking

On Saturday, we picked up one of Brian's labmates and her husband and drove North to a pumpkin farm. I think the original plan was to go apple and pumpkin picking but there was a family festival going on so we did that instead. A few other labmates joined up, and we quickly noticed that it was very family-oriented; we may have been the only group there without kids in tow (at least until we were joined by yet another of Brian's labmates with her family, complete with a 4-year old and a baby).

Here's the group on a 'shortbus':
Jackie, Jenni, Brian, Charlie, Jon, and Yuan.

As you might expect, there were lots of pumpkins!

Big ones you could cuddle up with:


and giant ones that might take over the world:
(actually it's a really little one that I'm holding up opportunistically)

They had already harvested a bunch of them and put them in organized piles for you to choose from, but we paid extra and went on a tractor hayride that took us out into the field. We were so excited when they stopped to let us pick pumpkins, only to realize that the ones next to the road weren't connected to any vines - it looked like they'd just driven along the path and tossed a few pumpkins out of the truck. I'm sure the guy in the tractor was snickering as he watched us "pick" our pumpkins..."he he he, city slickers, he he he..."

Of course you need a little red radio flyer wagon to cart around your orange treasures:

but you can't take it with you into the 3-mile corn maze:


It was a fun, g-rated day and we came home with a couple of beauties.

What's going to be our OFT next weekend? I don't know for sure, but Brian just cut out a Filene's Basement coupon for me... hmmm...