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.

To the Fair

We're off to 2 Fairs tomorrow. Well, "we" isn't that we are bilocating, the man we've been working with is going to one and we are going to another.

I thought there ought to be an easier way to catch a pumpkin that with a lasso but what do I know.

Actually it wasn't a lasso at all it was... a... contraption. Aragorn tied all the knots and made a... contraption.

There was a vole living under the pumpkin (yes a vole, not a mole). This is the nest, the little black critter was scurrying around.

This baby will be going down south to a local-ish fair.

This is just a pretty pumpkin.

This squash will be going up north to another contest. Apparently at this place there is going to be a pumpking setting a new world record. I'm looking forward to hearing the weight.

Corn Maze

We took another trip to a local corn maze. As you can see from above it is a gecko theme.

This years theme came with a variety of tesselations, penrose tilings, fibonacchi numbers, and golden spirals.

They added alot of neat slides and fun things for "simple pleasures".... which never includes video games!!

The pedal cars were really great!

Even Poppy got a ride.

There were little pedal tractors too.

There were goats, chicks and probably other things I didn't see. As well as their beautiful clydesdale horses (that they still use). There were lots of other things like the corn pit to bury yourself in.

This young man was explaining the theme.

How the maze works is that you get a piece of paper with 1/8th of the maze. You follow the trails/clues until you come to a mailbox that has the next 1/8th of the maze. Bit by bit you work your way out of the maze. I didn't go in this year but other years I was generally in the last group to get out.

So I stayed behind with the little guys which still left me with 4 children....

Bilbo took the opportunity to chase the chickens.

This is the great big cumvertthat goes under the road to get to the parking lot.

Watermelons

Sam and Frodo raised a couple big watermelons, one was 99 pounds the other was 105 pounds. Let me just say that is alot of watermelon. That is alot of gallons of zip loc bags of watermelon. That is alot of watermelon juice. Watermelon juice does not make a good floor cleaner. But 14 year old boys don't care much about trifles.

Fall

Since my camera is still on the blitz and I still have not called.... whoever it is.... Aragorn was kind enough to put a tic tac in my phone so I could take pictures. I don't know what it really is, I only know that it was pulled out of an old tic tac box. Don't ask.... I didn't either. But if you would like to know how Aragorn got a tic tac to allow me to share pictures feel free to email him.

So I thought I'd see if I could take some pictures with my phone.

A bit on the blurry side. but it'll do. Fall is lovely and I can hardly wait til spring!!

Wooly Bear.

Yes, we do truly live off-the-grid, these are our so-far solar panels with the wannabe-put up section yet to be completed... you know that summer project you started last spring and it is October and it's still a wannabe.

And you ask what is that jungle in the forefront. It is just that, our jungle. Some might say it started out as a garden but it morphed into something else. The project of the day was to prepare our jungle for next year's garden.

I don't know what this is but it was a nice bush. Apparently this has been in the jungle for 2 years. Yes, for the olde-time visitors of this blog, yes, that is the same pole from the windmill that blew down a year or two ... or 3 ago.

Our muskmelon crop. What do you mean "where is it?!" Pippin is holding it!

Bilbo and a frost survivor. I don't think that was such a hard frost afterall.