Last Friday we snuck out to the pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins for our family.  We have three pumpkin patches for you to go through to find the perfect.

The pictures I’m sharing with you here are just from one of the patches.

There are seriously some gorgeous pumpkins out there.It didn’t take us long to find our perfect pumpkin for carving!

Here’s Cedi’s pumpkin!

It took her some effort to carry it back.

Capri and Pip worked together to find their pumpkins.

And it wasn’t long before Pip had hers …

and Capri had hers …

Pumpkin picking at our orchard is a pretty laid back experience.  You can either bring your own wagon or use one of ours.  You find your favorite pumpkins and bring them back to the lean next to the shop.  We have a “Pumpkin Weight Station” set up there.  You take a sheet that’s right by the scale and fill out how much each of your pumpkin and gourds weigh, put your pumpkins into your car and just bring the sheet into the shop to pay for your pumpkins.

We’re officially opening up our ‘Pick Your Own Pumpkin Patch’!  We have a ‘Pick Your Own Pumpkin Patch at two spots in orchard this year, just north of the playground area and on the south side along the orchard walk.  You can head out there and pick whichever pumpkin you want.  We have a few wagons but if you’re worried about having to haul your pumpkins I would definitely recommend either bringing your own wagon for hauling or making sure that you pick pumpkins that you can carry back.  We’re always collecting wagons for the orchard so feel free to drop your old ones off!

photo by Friends in Photography

If you don’t feel like heading to the patch you can ‘Pick Your Own Pumpkin’ out of the ones we have pre-picked by the store.  Slightly easier…

Regardless of how you decide to ‘Pick Your Own’ figuring out the price of your pumpkin stays the same.  I’m going to give you a quick step by step on

How to Weigh & Pay for Your Pumpkin and/or Gourds

You are going to take your pumpkin and or gourds first to our ‘Pumpkin Weigh Station’.  The Pumpkin Weigh Station is located in under the lean, just south of the store.  I circled the location on the orchard map above.

photo by Friends in Photography

Here you can see the customer bringing her pumpkin over to the weigh station.Picture of weigh station not in use…

photo by Friends in Photography

Next weigh your pumpkin/gourd on the scale.  Each pumpkin and/or gourd should be weighed individually.  

Grab a sheet by the scale to fill out.  There should be sheets and pencils.  If there’s not, come into the store to get more.  Mark on the sheet which wait group each pumpkin falls in – tallying works wonderfully!  You can round down with your weights.  For example if you pumpkin ways 7.56 lbs please mark it in the $3 category.  If it weights 10.25 lbs it’s in the $4 category.

Feel free to take a break to pet one of our friendly kitties.

Once you have your pumpkins and gourds weighed and tallied put them in your car.  We don’t need to see them in the store – we’re sure you’ve picked out a really amazing pumpkin or gourd but we’re really okay not seeing it.

Before you leave the orchard though please bring the your tally sheet into the store to pay for your pumpkins/gourds.

If you forget what I wrote in this blog post once you get to the store – you can find the instructions on the Pumpkin Weigh Station – I’ll probably post a sign a few other places too now that I think about it.

We’re very laid back about the pumpkin picking here – we hope you enjoy your experience!

I want to start this post out by saying that I’m not trying to be condescending with this post…just trying to make things easier on you. We tend to get crazy busy on the weekend and I am hoping this will clarify a few things for everyone before their visit. We do our best to make your experience fun and fabulous so we’ve developed a pumpkin picking/weighing/paying process to make everyone’s life easier. It’s fairly self explanatory but I thought it would be fun to create a picture ‘how to’ for you before you head out to the orchard. If you have questions, please do not be afraid to ask…we’re more than happy to help.

Step 1: Head up to ‘the Patch’ to find the perfect pumpkin… (make sure it doesn’t have a child’s name on it before you choose that one…those are our cousins’ pumpkins…) or Step 1: Chose a pre-picked pumpkin from the display around the farm. Step 2: Haul your pumpkin to the scale (located just to the left of the entrance to the apple shop). Feel free to use one of the wagons about the orchard or even bring your own. Step 3: Put your pumpkin on the scale to weigh it. Step 4: See what it weighs. Step 5: Look at the Pumpkin Slip next to the scale and determine which price category your pumpkin is in.

Step 6: Mark the box that matches your pumpkin. You can continue to do this for all the pumpkins you choose.

Step 7: Put the pumpkins in your vehicle and just bring the slip of paper to us at the registry. We trust you…we don’t need to see your pumpkin…unless you’re really excited about your choice and then of course I would love to see it.

Hope you have fun picking pumpkins at the orchard!

Also, lots of winter squash is starting to role in! Don’t wait too long to get your favorites an stock up for the upcoming year!