The $500 Pumpkin

I know this post isn’t exactly timely (considering Halloween was a week ago), but oh well. These days, Mr. Bunches and I are fully operating under the better late than never approach (as evidenced by the completion of our patio last week). So here’s just a little late Halloween shout-out.

The day before Halloween it was gorgeous here in WNY (we’ve actually had a string of fantastic days here, and since we’ve heard some rough things about the winters in WNY, we’ve been trying to get outside and enjoy every nice day possible). And so we decided to head over to the Great Pumpkin Farm in Clarence.

And, like just about everything in WNY, this wasn’t just any ol’ pumpkin farm. It was also a festival (I’ve never lived in an area that loved its festivals more than Western New York–I swear there’s at least one every weekend). But, they still had pumpkins (although a bit picked over since Halloween was only one day away at this point) . . .

Yeah–that one was big. But not quite as big as this one:

And to think–for only $500+ we could’ve taken it home! (Their pumpkins cost $0.40/lb, and this sucker was well over 1,000 pounds.) But besides all the pumpkins and gourds . . .

There were also lots of fun cut-outs for picture-posing perfection (try saying that 3 times fast).

And what pumpkin party would be complete without some pumpkin cannons, right?

The big one was massive. And it LAUNCHED those pumpkins. I tried to capture it in these pictures, and if you look closely, you can see the pumpkin flying through the air (oh, and keep in mind that these weren’t little pumpkins–nope, the pumpkins in the big cannon were bigger than my head).

Impressive, isn’t it? Of course, if you wanted the more immediate gratification of actually watching the cannoned pumpkin hit something and explode, then the smaller cannon was just right.

Once we had our fill of watching pumpkins get shot at completely unnatural speeds, it was time to venture over to the festival. Cuz you know how my Mr. B loves his festival games (in case you forgot, check out here and here). And guess which game they had?!

Our favorite!!!! We love this game.

Any five in a row wins, but unfortunately this time we came away empty-handed. But it provided our festival-game fix, so all was well. And we won last time, so it’s probably fair that we let the kiddos take home the prizes this time.

Last, but certainly not least, were the animals. You can’t have a proper WNY festival without farm animals.

I didn’t take any pictures of the goats, but believe me, there were goats. Sigh. Sometimes I still think about the one that got away . . .

Oh well. At least there was this super sweet calf to hang out with.

So there you have it. The Great Pumpkin Farm of Clarence. Of course, we didn’t do the hay ride or the corn maze or the rides or the pumpkin pyramid, but we have to leave something for next year, right?