East Bay Baby

Baby’s first Halloween will be spent out of the country this year.  We’ll be in Hong Kong, and it seems that the only places that really celebrate Halloween in Hong Kong are bars.  I don’t think we’ll be doing any trick-o-treating this year.  Also, I don’t think pumpkin patches are all too popular in Hong Kong.

But, what kind of parents would we be if we didn’t take him on his mandatory pumpkin patch photo shoot?  We figured the best day to take him on such an excursion would be the morning of the day we left for Hong Kong.  Sure, the packing wasn’t finished and the house wasn’t cleaned and there were errands that still needed to be run.  But pumpkin patch was high on our priority list.

Luckily there’s a pumpkin patch close to us – Perry’s Pumpkin Patch at Ardenwood Historic Farm in Fremont.  It’s a huge pumpkin patch (4 acres)  - not like one of those lots that convert to pumpkin patches in October and then Christmas tree “farms” in December.  They also sell different varieties of pumpkins, from the regular jack-o-lantern pumpkins to the mini pumpkins to sugar pie pumpkins for baking.

We arrived a little after 9am on Saturday, and it wasn’t crowded at all.  There was plenty of parking to be had, and lots of space to roam around and find the perfect setting for the photo shoot.  The lack of a crowd is a huge selling point for me, since from what I hear, the Half Moon Bay pumpkin patch is a huge madhouse.  They even have wagons so you can haul a whole lot of pumpkins to your car!  (Or, in our case, pretend that we’re putting pumpkins in the wagon for purchase, but really using them as an opportune backdrop for photos.)  Really, this place is made for photo shoots – there are a bunch of displays with the faces cut out so you can demand that your kid stick his face in it (what are those called???).  And rows and rows of pumpkins are really quite picturesque.

There’s also a huge hay pyramid made of over 400 barrels for climbing, and you can also purchase tickets for a hay ride.  (I never knew hay rides existed, or were even considered a pastime, until I moved to Indiana.  And even then, I didn’t understand what the appeal was and never tried it.  Maybe one year I’ll take the kid on a hay ride.)

It’s really a very family-friendly atmosphere.  By the time we left at around 10am, there were many more families beginning to show up, but still plenty of parking.

For hours and further details, see Perry’s Pumpkin Patch Website.