Pumpkin time in Chicago?  Well, that means it’s time to load up the family and head to the big (picture perfect) commercial ‘farm’ in the middle of suburbia or up to Wisconsin for the yearly pumpkins.  It was always quite an affair to go to a pumpkin farm on a weekend in October and one should really prepare to make a day of it.  Sure, as we all know, one can easily find apples and pumpkins in the local grocery store – but going to the pumpkin farm is a rite of Fall.  It turns out that going to the country to get pumpkins in Michigan is a lovely outing and doesn’t take the whole day.

This year we went to get our pumpkins at The Country Mill in Charlotte.  It wasn’t even 20 minutes away and really was a FARM out in the country.  We passed horse stables, cow pastures and many, many fields of corn (my daughter wanted to go find pigs after we saw the cows) on our way to select the perfect canvases for this year’s jack-o-lanterns.

We arrived and put on our boots, got our little red wooden wagon (!) and headed out beyond the barn to the pumpkin patch to pick our own pumpkins.  The pumpkins appeared to stretch on forever with roaming paths appearing between the rows of vines.  My daughter had a blast wandering around the acres of big orange gourds – even after tripping over a vine and getting a mouth full of dirt.

The day was topped off with fresh, warm pumpkin doughnuts before we peeled off our muddy boots and piled our pumpkins in the car for the short trip home.  Jack-o-lanterns and roasted pumpkin seeds here we come!