At The Pumpkin Patch

If you ever want to see pure joy on display for hours, I have a suggestion. Just take fifteen five-year-olds on a field trip to a pumpkin patch! The following is an account of the entire day, at least the best that I can remember. After all, I couldn’t type on a computer or dictate into my phone when I was busy wrangling a bunch of Littles getting lost in a corn maze.

At the pumpkin patch, we saw a machine that was over 100 years old and still able to start up and grind corn into grits and corn flour! I told the kiddos, “That’s almost as old as Mr. Rick, and it actually works better than I do.”

The geese did a whole lot of honking. I think they were all laughing at my joke.

The Littles also laughed.

The farmer didn’t.

Before the grinding was done, we all got to hold a handful of freshly ground grits and corn flour. But what came after is what the kids truly loved. There was a huge corn pit filled about three feet deep with corn kernels. We all took our turns stepping into the huge pit, and yes, you can dive down and come back up and go BAZINGAAAA! The references to the famous television show The Big Bang Theory and Sheldon were lost on the Littles.

The adults all laughed.

The farmer still didn’t laugh.

Next: Firefighters. Believe it or not, at the pumpkin patch was a fire truck with real live firefighters. They brought their truck and Sparks, their black and white fire dog. Dear Reader: Sparks is a hugger. All he wanted to do was hug everybody he met. That was good because kindergarteners are huggers too. We could’ve left the pumpkin patch that day without seeing anything else and our Littles would’ve been so happy.

Sparks hugged.

The Littles hugged.

The farmer did not hug.

After the fire truck and Sparks (by the way, Sparks also loves to give licks to faces), we ventured over to the dreaded corn maze. I say dreaded for a very good reason: Mr. Rick got lost not once, but twice last year. And if I don’t finish this article on time, you know where to find me.

I made a wrong turn in the maze and found a dead end, but it was the right turn after all. At the very end of that dead end was a little green and black spider building her web across the pathway. The mid-morning sunlight made his web shine as our fifteen Littles watched in amazement while the green and black spider built her web. Truly a once-in-a-lifetime event seen at the dead end of a corn maze.

I watched the spider.

The Littles watched the spider.

The farmer hates spiders.

Our next adventure was the hayride pulled by a tractor driven by none other than Santa Claus himself! When I asked him why he was wearing a T-shirt and a baseball cap, he said, “I’m on a vacation.” Then he looked back at all the kids loaded up, smiled and said, “But soon I’m about to go back to work making toys for good little girls and boys.”

Toward the end of the tour, one of the last stops was the Extension Service display. The lady told us that the center of our country is called a corn belt, and that area produces enough corn to feed every person and animal in the United States with some still leftover to export. I asked them if they could export some corn to my house cause we’re gonna have some for dinner tonight.

The Littles laughed.

The county extension lady laughed.

The farmer scolded me for picking corn out of the corn maze.

I’d been dreading our last station in the rotation all day, perhaps even more than the corn maze. We made an announcement that if anyone needed to use the restroom before we got back onto the bus, they needed to get into a line. A line of eight impatient Littles was stretched at the bottom of a grassy hill when I asked the farmer, “Where’s the bathroom?”

The farmer pointed up the hill where a pair of port-a-potties stood, “Up there.”

As I led the Littles up the hill, I looked back to count and make sure I had the correct number. That’s when I noticed that the farmer was looking our way. And I knew he knew what I knew: this would be the very first time our Littles had ever seen the inside of a port-a-potty.

The Littles were not smiling.

Yours Truly was not smiling.

But now, the farmer was smiling.