I spent a lovely morning at Gorman Heritage Farm with my brother and sister-in-law and their two children.  Gorman has a unique kind of fall festival that centers around an enormous field of sunflowers.  You walk out to the field and they give you a pair of shears and a bag.  You can cut your sunflowers fresh from the stalks and take them home with you.  My brother Will, niece Bailey, and I set out into the tall plants to get some pretty flowers to take home.  The happy yellow faces were a-buzz with happy bees.

We found a flower that had grown sideways, making it easy for Bailey to reach.  With a little help from her dad, she cut it and promptly took all its leaves off and dropped it on the ground.  Very Montessori – she was interested in the process of cutting the flowers but didn’t really care about the product – fresh flowers to take home.  Oh well.

She did have fun adventuring in the field.  The flowers were tall enough to hide her little three-year old body so when she disappeared, we called out, “Bailey!  Where are you?”  You could see the flowers being pushed aside as she moved through them.

She popped out and said, “Aunt Erin, here I am!  I was having an adventure in there!”

Will and Sasha were looking at some food vendors when Bailey spotted this creature through the fence.  She said, “Aww, look at that pretty little… Aunt Erin, what is that?”  I told her it was a goat and she finished, “Aww, look at that pretty little goat.  Can we go pet it?”  So we walked over and she found a stick to pet it with.  We sent a picture to my husband with a note that Bailey and I would like a goat for our farm too 🙂

Being a Fall Festival, there was the obligatory pumpkin patch as well.  Bailey picked out a pumpkin for herself then cute little ones for each of us too.

Landen, on the other hand, was mostly interested in what there was to eat.  He got ahold of a heavenly cinnamon-sugar-coated donut and he had all he needed.  He and his stroller with caked in cinnamon sugar by the time we left but he was happy.  Oh, he did like petting the alpaca too, though I don’t know how the alpaca felt about it because Landen’s version of petting is more like grabbing a wad of fur.  It’s a learning process…

Fall seems to be packed with festivals offering pumpkins, hayrides, mums, and the like.  This was a nice mix of the usual suspects with the lovely addition of a field of happy flowers.  It’s definitely one I’d hit again and would recommend it to single adults and families alike.

Happy Fall Y’All!