Old Baker Farm

Two Saturday's ago, after Caleb's soccer game, we spent the day at Old Baker Farm. We started out by making our way through the cornfield maze. The kids enjoyed it, but it wore me out. It just went on and on and on. I can see why farming mothers feared losing their young children in the cornfield: the corn stalks are taller than a man and it would be virtually impossible to find a lost toddler in acres of corn. We finally found our way out (thanks to a couple of "shortcuts" by Daddy), and then got in line for the boys' first horseback ride. Caleb had been on ponies before, but this was his first time on a horse. The boys rode together and they loved the way the saddle bounced up and down as the horse walked. (I loved the beautiful pictures of them on horseback with corn fields and cotton fields in the background.) Next we headed to the cotton bounce. The cotton-picking festival at Old Baker Farm had taken place the week before, and a lot of the cotton collected had been piled into an enclosed wagon. It was like a cotton bounce house, and the kids loved it.

The barn and the farm animals were our next stop. We saw turkeys, ducks, chickens, goats, pigs and even petted a fluffy rabbit. Next was climbing and sliding down the huge haystack. We stayed there until Caleb's 5-year-old friend took a tumble from the top and all four parents agreed it was time to move on. We took a bathroom & snack break before boarding a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch to choose our pumpkins. Just like last year, Marcus went to the furthest corner of the huge pumpkin patch, believing that the "pickin's" would be best in that untraveled area. He found a nice big pumpkin that he liked, while the boys and I chose smaller ones closer to the center of the field. We hopped on the hay wagon for a ride back to the main farm. Ethan and I were wiped out by now, but Daddy and Caleb had enough steam to close out the day with some fun in the hay maze.

It had been a full day when we finally headed home around 5:00 pm. The boys hadn't napped, of course, so they fell asleep immediately in the car. It was a 40-minute drive home, and when we got home, we gambled and lost: we tried transferring the boys into the house when we got home, hoping that all the sun and activity would render them tired enough to sleep the night through. Alas, neither of them transferred, so we had two very tired and grumpy boys for the next few hours. We made it through baths and dinner and finally all collapsed into bed.