Rainy day here in Sarasota, so in keeping with my resolve to purge excess photos, I revisited the pics that I took of the bugs before we left Long Island. One of my favorite days with Timmy and the girls was spent at Windy Acres Farm…oh wait, excuse me…Windy Acres Orchard. The farm has rebranded itself as an Orchard. Whatever. We had a fun time, along with hundreds (thousands?) of other pilgrims in search of pumpkins, gourds, mums, hay rides and corn mazes.
When we were growing up in the fifties and sixties, the North Fork of Long Island was home to potato farms. Many, many potato farms. Long Island potatoes were as well known as Long Island duckling. Beginning in the 1980s, a combination of the Colorado potato beetle, high interest rates and suburban sprawl led to a steep decline in potato farming – potato farms began to give way to housing developments, vineyards and a phenomenon known as “agritainment”.
I can’t say with certainty that Windy Acres began life as a potato farm, but I’m pretty sure I remember rows of curly green leaves in the fields on the bus ride to Mercy high school. (…way back in the day – circa 1965 to 1969).
I believe we first visited Windy Acres about 15 years ago with Gracie and Charlotte. We were headed out on a pumpkin picking expedition and wanted to avoid the previous years’ traffic debacle-wherein we got a late start and subjected the toddlers to a verrrry long car ride. Anyway, at that time Windy Acres was the closest pumpkin farm to our home -a quick and easy 20 minute ride. A few picnic tables, a pony ride and a corn maze. Flash forward to the 21 century and you have two food venues, live music, an expansive playground – an agritainment wonder. Windy Acres became our recurring destination for strawberry, apple and peach picking (probably why the name change from farm to orchard) and of course pumpkin picking. The tradition continued when Claire and Isabel were old enough to join the fun. Those were joyful years when we were lucky enough to shepherd all four of the lovebugs together to the farm (orchard). The Littles were in awe of their older cousins, and Grace and Charlotte enjoyed showing them around the farm (orchard). We got off to an early(ish) start on the Saturday of Columbus Day weekend. As early as it was, we still had to park in Timbuktu.
We parked Timmy on a wagon and went off in search of the perfick pumpkin.
Okay, so here we have Isabel explaining to Tim how she was bit by a caterpillar…which is evidently a real thing. Please note Claire’s genuine concern. #sisterlove
Here they are playing the puzzle game where you carefully pull out the block …until someone isn’t so careful and the tower falls…I cannot for the life of me think of the name- don’t get old.
I captured the instant that Claire lost.
The consequence of losing…crawling through this pipe.
The requisite jumping off the train pics
We parked Timmy at a picnic table and headed off for the corn maze…but not before he gave us some advice “If the exit is to the right of the entrance…always turn right” …I guess he didn’t want a repeat of 2019 when we were lost for 45 minutes and he nearly had to send a search party in for us.
It was good advice, but kind of ruined the fun…because we made two right turns and were at the exit😢
Claire for the selfie win
They call it a hayride, so where’s the hay?
Please note: we did require that they eat an ear of roasted corn before the caramel apples, donuts and candy corn. Those apple cider donuts though.
So this trip down pumpkin pickin memory lane was a good way to spend a rainy day…I purged a ton of photos and shared a bunch of my favorites from a very happy day. Thanks for following along.
