It’s October! Time for your social media feeds to be filled with gourd coffees, impossible decorating inspiration, and cute families in cozy sweaters going apple picking. And as much as I love cider doughnuts, I have made the mistake of taking my family to pick pumpkins and, in my experience, it is less “fall inspiration” and more “tears and regret”.
Here is an example of what the last few years have looked like for us. To begin with, all of us are hot and sweaty because someone (ahem, me) insisted on wearing cute fall clothes, and now it is 90 degrees and we have had to walk four miles to the patch to pick our pumpkin. Once there, no one can agree on just one, so we end up with five pumpkins that we then have to drag, in a wagon, four miles back. By this time everyones legs have ceased to work. It is simply too hot for them to walk so we must carry their sweaty little bodies or pull them with the pumpkins and pray that the wagon holds together on our journey (is this what the Oregon Trail was like?). When we make it back, everyone is hangry and on the verge of a breakdown so we spend $50 on snacks and drinks. Plus we must get the tiny pumpkin carving set that will inevitably break the first time we use it. By the time we are back in the car, dirty, scratched from walking in fields of pumpkin stems, covered in a light layer of cinnamon sugar and goat saliva (don’t get me started on actually finding quarters to buy pellets that my children inevitably spilled as soon as the goats got too close), and definitely crying, my husband and I will look at each other and swear to never do this again.
This year, I’m skipping all of that. I will go and buy cider, doughnuts, and apples while my kids are in school. For pumpkins, I’m planning to take them to the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church pumpkin sale. Every year in October, they fill their parking lot with rows and rows of pumpkins in various shapes, sizes, and colors. They are reasonably priced and they even have tiny pumpkins that only cost one dollar (go crazy kiddos). You drive up, pick out your pumpkins, put them in the car, and leave. And if you angle your camera the right way, I’m pretty sure you can still get a fall worthy photo that your kid might actually be happy in.
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Pumpkin Sale
October 1st through 31st
10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily
2101 S. Prospect Ave
Champaign
Free, but bring money for pumpkins
