please don't feed the aliens

Today A's preschool had a trip to Huber's farm, just above White Marsh. Somehow 3 carseats were crammed into the back of my friend B's car, 3 boys strapped in, and 2 crazy mommies tried not to get horribly lost. Everything worked out fine, and we arrived to a very overcast, but warm, morning of hayrides and veg picking. It hasn't felt like fall at all, and the poor plants have just been ravaged by drought, but there were still enough to get a nice bag full of goodies. It was great for A to see where our nice clean produce comes from (nice dirty lanes of plants, rotting veggies below our feet, and herbs), and there were parts of a haunted hayride that we passed on the way to each vegetable patch. Some parts were horribly macabre, but the rest were funny. I liked the low-tech quality of the place--no plastic-y Chinese prefab scary junk, just homemade hay-stuffed clothes with masks on, and old rusty farm equipment and boats transformed into castles and pirate ships. Oh yeah, and aliens.
We ended by picking a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch. I can't remember ever doing that before--I've chosen pumpkins from crates, and "grown" them in my back yard, but never this. I put quotes around "grown" because the vines just appeared out of nowhere the first summer we lived here, and I thought, "oh nice! Zucchini!" The flowers were the same, at least. Then the zucchini got more and more round and turned orange...well, I did grow up in the city. How was I to know? I felt like it was a real confirmation of our choice to live there. Of all the plants to magically appear where I am living, pumpkins are perfect. Like having a welcome committee of bunnies greeting us on the front porch.
trudging back from the tomato patch. Very squishy.my friend's totally adorable kids. All our kids were very lethargic today, which made for good photo ops (they stay still longer! bonus!). I think our boys are going through growth spurts. the produce, post-washing. Yellow wax beans, yellow plum tomatoes, red grape tomatoes, swiss chard, and herbs! very tasty.


**update** I cooked the chard using this recipe tonight, and it was tres yummy!
**update 2** Here are the photos on flickr!