October 9, 2010

At the Fair

We're at the last fair for the season (for us) .... I know... thank goodness, you're sick of pumpkins!

We felt a little like the runt of the litter.


This was the spooky silo, I guess the boys went in this and in a haunted house (much to my horrification but dads don't worry about being awake at night as they generally sleep through such things). But I also have bad memories of such haunted things. That said, my boys came out laughing their fool heads off. Go figure.

Frodo, Merry and Pippin went on a hay ride to... sit down... go pick out pumpkins.

This place had what seemed like miles of pumpkins.

Not to mention the absolutely most enormous scarecrow.... the size of a house.

These tomatoes caught my eye, now that to met is a great garden. A skinny little row, stuff growing up a trellis of sorts, neat and tidy.

Aragorn was sitting discussing giant pumpkins with some of the men he met at the fair a couple weeks ago.
The funny part about the pumpkins the boys picked out (and no, I don't know why Merry is making that face or what it means) is that they matched their personality. The smooth one was Frodo's the absolutely crazy nubbly one was Pippin's and the one in between was Merry's. Uncanny.

This was a bit of a disappointing moment. You see, our pumpkin was going to crack so we had to pull it off the vine 2 weeks ago, sadly that means it started to dry out a little and shrivel. So this baby was only 897 pounds and we came in 8th place, winning $75. To me the most exciting part was winning the big fancy ribbon!! A picture is somewhere down the way....
Someone brought this huge watermelon that weighed 158.5 pounds.
He carved it up and shared it, as you can see the slices were huge. We saved the seeds. One it was hollowed out, I kid you not, it was the size of a cradle.

Here is Frodo with our check and our ribbon. I'm not sure about the glum expression!!

Then came the real fun. Pumpkin growers tend to have interesting and geekish ideas of fun.
The idea was to take this nearly 1000 pound pumpkin and try to crash it down on the scarecrow to smash it flat.

Now, what is the first thing that you are asked if you homeschool? "But what about socialization?" Well, I don't know about other homeschoolers but Sam made himself at home with the ropes and those who were running the pumpkin-smashing-the-scarecrow event.

Frodo jumped in as well.

I want to guess that the crane was up 150 feet at least, if not more.

Ready, aim, fire................

It made a huge bang when it hit the island.........

and merely decapitated this poor scarecrow.
That's his head.

The 2nd wildly fun game in giant pumpkin world was to drop a pumpkin into the pond itself.

I didn't capture the initial blast as it hit but there were a couple aftermaths.


This is Poppy in the "belly button" of our 1,203 pound pumpkin holding one of the pumpkins from the neighbor's garden. Some people put little pumpkin caps on their baby's head, we do things a little differently around here.

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