In an area such as this, a phenomenon exists that is quaint and old fashion feeling. Let’s call it “Pick Your Own.” In the late spring, PYO is strawberries. There are plenty of places to plop your self down and pick quarts and quarts of the red gems. Soon after that it is blueberries and sometimes raspberries. Our freezer has always held the frozen little blue balls, waiting to be made into a topping for pancakes and ice cream.
In the late summer there is apple picking and there are just too many local orchards to count that offer PYO sessions. We went a couple weeks ago to get Mrsfabp’s favorite apples, Macouns, but they were not ready to be picked yet so she settled for some Cortland’s instead. The day was marked with reminiscing at the orchard because we used to take the kids there all the time when they were young and the memory banks were super-charged up by the smell of the locally well know apple dumplings with ice cream.
Even the winter provides plenty of PYO opportunities with the Christmas Tree farms that dot the country side. We used to make it a regular outing to go and cut our own tree and bring it home to decorate.
So Monday we went to a local farm, Breezy Acres, to get some pumpkins and gourds and visit with the goats, a MollieJupiter favorite activity. It was a beautiful day and we spent a long time there getting into the fall spirit. However when we were leaving, I was shocked, SHOCKED I say, at what I saw. There was a “Pick Your Own” pumpkin patch filled not with pumpkins but with deceit.
(Not Breezy Acres "Pumpkin Patch" but an incredible reproduction of the deceit!)
When you pick your own strawberries or blueberries or apples, you go to the plant/tree and pull off a fresh fruit. But this was not the case in the PYO Pumpkin Patch. What we had there was a field with a bunch of pumpkins lined up in rows. No vines, no hay mulch, no cutting the pumpkin off the plant. They were simply lined up like some sort of bazaar beauty pagent, with crates next to the plot of ground to replenish the stock. The only difference between this pick your own and Walmart was that in Walmart they leave them in the cardboard crate instead of lining them up in rows. How disappointing.
(What a PYO Pumpkin Patch should look like!!!)
Really Breezy Acres? Seriously? Pick your own? No, just a feeble attempt at pulling the wool over the consumer’s eyes. I am dissapoint! (For the uninformed...Internet meme)
2 comments:
Sorry you were disappointed, Peng. For me, this was a lovely taste of fall in New England. Thank you for this post!
Shocked. Shocked I say. Quel surprise!
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