We had quite a day yesterday! In the morning we headed up with my sister and her bunch to the pumpkin patch. We have a great local grower's association about 30 minutes north of here. It's basically just a huge area with different farmers, and the association advertises for them and whatnot. It's called Green Bluff. We go up there in the summer for all sorts of u-pick fruit and also pumpkins in October. The farm we go to for pumpkins has a huge cannon they shoot pumpkins out of. They also do fun stuff for the kids... this year there was a big straw pile to roll in, a straw maze, chickens, donkeys and horses to pet. Last year they had pony rides, but not this year.
Eleora had a great time just running around and getting dirty. 
They had all kinds of old vehicles and farm machinery just set up for playing on or taking pictures, etc. She tried to pet the chickens, petted the donkey (Eeyore)
...was only semi-afraid of the straw maze, and had a great time in the pumpkin patch itself. She mostly liked to pick up handfuls of dirt and throw it around.We also got a family picture, since my brother-in-law is a fantastic photographer, and of course I'll post that when I get it. It'll be one with ME in it! I'm usually the person with the camera so you don't see me in many of the pictures.
The pumpkins were excellent this year. Last year there were a lot of them that had already started to rot but this year there were so many great ones to choose from! I got 8 pie pumpkins to process into puree to freeze for pies and pumpkin bread. Mostly pumpkin bread, though... I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin pie but I adore pumpkin bread! We also got a couple for carving. I think Eleora will really have fun carving pumpkins... especially the part where she gets to squish her fingers through the pumpkin guts... hehe.
I also picked up 2 pints of local honey while I was up there - I love buying directly from the growers. I think it's so important to buy our food as close to the source as possible to eliminate the corporate middlemen. Farmers in this country get a fraction of each dollar we spend on their food, and so the closer to them that we can buy it, I think is better. I am actually transitioning our family to local eating... I don't think I can do 100% just yet but I've been focusing on buying local produce. One of the grocery stores nearby stocks a lot of locally grown produce. I wasn't able to put up enough of it to get us through the winter so I'll probably end up doing most of our transition in the spring.
We also would like to put a side of beef in the freezer but we don't have the space for it, or the money (since we literally have no income right now until I go back to work next week). I'm hoping by this time next year to be pretty much transitioned. We do live within wheat country, so I think that's definitely possible. With 2 small children and me working full-time (Tommy has a really high workload with school and also part-time work) we are too busy to really be able to fully transition but I'd like to do MOSTLY local. And then when he's done with school and I can quit my job and stay home with the kids... watch out! I'll be a preserving, gardening maniac ;)
