Weekend Two of our maze and pumpkin season is over and I'm catching up today. Both weekends have been hot and windy, with beautiful Mondays the next day.
Crowds have been pretty good considering the weather. Attendance is usually light until the middle of the month when the temperatures cool down and people in the mood for fall decorations and halloween.
People have enjoyed our maze and theme, and spend a relaxing 3-5 hours on our farm to walk through the maze, do all the activities, and ride the Prairie Tram to see the buffalo herd. Many stay for a meal and then go through the maze again with a Glow Stick, and finish the night with the Haunted Trial.
We hosted the Official Kansas Giant Pumpkin Contest this last Saturday. How do you weigh a giant pumpkin? Very carefully, and with a skid loader! We had seven entries, ranging from an 881 lber from a seasoned grower, to a 52 lb. pumpkin grown in a little girl's garden. (She did great for her first year, and I think it weighed about as much as she did.)
The winning pumpkin weighed in at a whopping 881 pounds, but the contest was kind of bittersweet for all of us. A family was supposed to bring a bigger pumpkin, measuring to weigh over 1000 lbs, which would have been Kansas' first ever grown that large. But the family didn't show up, so we starting weighing the pumpkins, hoping they had some kind of delay and were just running late.
Crowds have been pretty good considering the weather. Attendance is usually light until the middle of the month when the temperatures cool down and people in the mood for fall decorations and halloween.
People have enjoyed our maze and theme, and spend a relaxing 3-5 hours on our farm to walk through the maze, do all the activities, and ride the Prairie Tram to see the buffalo herd. Many stay for a meal and then go through the maze again with a Glow Stick, and finish the night with the Haunted Trial.
We hosted the Official Kansas Giant Pumpkin Contest this last Saturday. How do you weigh a giant pumpkin? Very carefully, and with a skid loader! We had seven entries, ranging from an 881 lber from a seasoned grower, to a 52 lb. pumpkin grown in a little girl's garden. (She did great for her first year, and I think it weighed about as much as she did.)
The winning pumpkin weighed in at a whopping 881 pounds, but the contest was kind of bittersweet for all of us. A family was supposed to bring a bigger pumpkin, measuring to weigh over 1000 lbs, which would have been Kansas' first ever grown that large. But the family didn't show up, so we starting weighing the pumpkins, hoping they had some kind of delay and were just running late. Turns out their pumpkin, plus their Kansas State fair winning entry was smashed by vandals. We felt so bad for them. The young daughter had won second place at last year's contest, so we knew of the family and were rooting for this big accomplishment.
There was an article about the contest, and the vandalism in the newspapers, so we all "made the news", but not how we had planned.
We growers always worry about the weather when tending to our giants, but not about someone smashing our summer's efforts. The family were able to save some seeds, so I hope they can grow a winner for next year's contest.
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