Bloom Where You're Planted Farm

Before we head into the second weekend of our Pumpkin Festival, I wanted to recap our opening weekend and share a couple of photos with you.

We had a great opening day on Saturday!  The weather was awesome all weekend.   It was Military Family Weekend, a tradition we started back in 2007.  I would estimate we had around 30 military families visit over the two days to take advantage of our free admission offer.  We always enjoy talking to the families about their backgrounds and hometowns.  We heard a lot of different regional accents, too!

This packed hay rack was filled with many military families and a few "regular" visitors.

 Another special event took place on Sunday.  Midwest Heart Connection, a group which supports families with children born with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), held their fall gathering at the farm.  There were around 165 guests.  We hosted the same event last year, and they are really a nice bunch.  It is amazing to watch how well the "heart babies" or "heart kids" as they call them (many of whom are now school-aged) get around after the many surgeries they have had to endure over their lifetimes.  Most of them could outrun me, I'm sure!

This is Ella, who was born with half a heart.  She was so cute and active -- a real miracle!

It is nice to have the first weekend under our belts!  This weekend is our "Photo Days" event.  Snyder Photography of Elmwood will be here from 1-5 p.m. each day to take family photos.  You can drop in, or contact him by email to make an appointment.

Hope to see you soon at the farm!

Well, its just after 10 p.m. the evening before we open for our fifth pumpkin patch season.  This is a record for us -- in past years we'd still be running around like crazy people at this time of night.  We send sincere thanks out to our parents for all their help to make this possible!

It hardly seems like it can be that time of year, but in a mere twelve hours the "open" sign will be out and the first guests should be arriving!  We're really excited to show off our new Schoolhouse Cafe and take the first guests for a ride on the new hay wagons.  The pumpkins are really nice this year, and I don't think we've ever had so many huge, beautiful gourds.   

We hope to see you soon at the farm so you can experience it all for yourselves.  Until then, its time for a hot shower and a good night's sleep!

Eleven days until our Sept. 19th opening day!  The hayracks are built, the water lines are completed, the schoolhouse kitchen is almost finished, and the displays in the gift shop are coming along nicely.  We don't sit down long this time of year!  When there's daylight we're usually outside working, and when the weather is bad we've been trying to get some of our errands, like shopping for supplies and ordering new t-shirts for our employees, out of the way.

At the moment, our "to-do" list seems like it will be managable.  But that can always change!  One of the more stressful things about a business like ours is that so many things have to be done last-minute.  We want everything to look nice on opening day, and that requires waiting as long as possible to decorate, mow, mulch, set up attractions, and pick pumpkins.  Don't let us fool you, though -- we love (almost) every minute of it! 

Opening weekend is also Military Family Weekend.  We invite service members and their immediate family members out to the farm and treat them to free admission.  This is our third year for the event, and we've really enjoyed it.  We've got a big party scheduled for that first Sunday, too, so we'll be starting off with a bang!

We're lining up a crew to pick pumpkins this coming Saturday if the weather is good.  It will be fun to see what all is out there in the patch!  We hope to see you soon at the farm - enjoy this beautiful weather and all the changing colors!