We’ve been forcing ourselves to do no Little Alexander work on Sundays. So today, after an epic breakfast, we spent the afternoon outside and away from HQ, visiting places we’ve been meaning to get to but hadn’t yet.

The first stop was McCurdy’s Pumpkin Patch. This was the last weekend they’re open, so we made it just in time. John and Ann McCurdy are great local folks, and their patch is refreshing. There are wagon rides, a corn maze, and plenty of space for kids to play, but it doesn’t feel all disney-world the way so many pumpkin patches now do. This is clearly a family farm selling what it’s grown and making it fun for families while they’re at it. Places like this are one of the big perks to living away from big cities.

And I really like picking out pumpkins. We came home with five. And I picked out about a dozen others that I loved just as much. There is something about the uniqueness of each piece of produce from a small farm or garden. I don’t know why it is we’ve come to value the uniformity offered by supermarket fruit and veggies. If all those pumpkins were the same, I would have only needed one. But it took five before I felt like I could be satisfied in the scope of what I took home. And even then, it felt hard leaving the others behind.

We then went walking in Pellett Woods, a small preserve just north of town. Fall can be so beautiful.