The Held Family Happenings: Bengston's Pumpkin Farm

This weekend, the weather was absolutely gorgeous, especially on Sunday! I wanted to take full advantage and do something fun outside. We decided to follow our annual tradition and head over to Bengston’s Farm. We’ve been coming here for the past several years and love it. Last year when we came, it was perfect. It was not crowded at all and we were able to do everything we wanted. This year was a completely different story! The word must have spread on what a great place Bengston’s is because it was SO crowded. The line of cars just to get into the parking lot was over 100 cars deep. There were people everywhere and all of the lines were very long. Everyone must have had the same idea we did and wanted to enjoy this beautiful fall day. I actually follow Bengston’s on FaceBook and they did a posting saying that they had to shut their doors and not allow any more people in because they were at full capacity.

When we arrived, we wanted to stop at the ‘picture shack’ and take our annual Held Family picture. We’ve done this every year for the past 3 years. We walked up to the ‘house’ where they always do pictures and found out they no longer do them! I was bummed. They said that the demand has gone way down since everyone seems to bring their own cameras and do pictures on their own. I see their point, but I always liked the fall scenery they had setup and comparing our family pics from year to year. So instead of it being a ‘picture shack,’ it had been replaced by an area where kids could go to get glitter tattoos. Ah well. Leah was definitely interested in a glitter tattoo. I forked over the $5 and she was a happy camper with a purple glitter heart on her forearm.

We walked down to the pumpkin area and let Leah and Mason run around in the pumpkin patch. I am not sure if I shared this or not, but Mason is (finally) full blown walking. He still walks a little like Frankenstein and can be wobbly on his feet, but there is no turning back for him. He loves his new found freedom! (I am scared). Anyways – he enjoyed walking around and touching all of the pumpkins. We also checked out the petting zoo. Both Leah and Mason had a great time feeding and petting the animals. This year, Bengston’s had a new feature….camel rides. I didn’t think Leah would be interested, but she told us that she wanted to ride one. The next thing you know…Leah is riding a camel! There was no line to ride the camels, probably because it was an (significant) extra charge. I told Rob he was going to go with her because there was no way I was going to get up on that thing! All of the lines for the rides were extremely long. Which again, was completely different from last year. Leah really wanted to ride the train, but there literally were over 200 people in line. I convinced her to go on the honey pot ride, since there were only about 50 people in line. The line moved fairly quickly and she was happy. We were going to stay for the pig races, but the next race didn’t start for another 20 minutes and the stands were already full. We walked around for a bit longer before deciding to head out. Next year, we may consider coming during the week since the crowds were so out of control.

It’s funny, Leah LOVES everything to do with Halloween. She enjoyed all of the spooky decorations/animations and wanted to see everything up close. Poor Mase Man on the other hand was terrified. There was a witch on a broom that had an evil cackle and the kid was shaking in his boots. He was so scared. After the pumpkin farm, we stopped at a Halloween store to pick up some costumes. Leah put on a werewolf mask and Mason just about lost it. Poor guy!