It’s that time of year again. Time to make the annual trek somewhere to pick out pumpkins suitable for carving. I know a lot of people just pop over to the supermarket and just grab whatever’s there. But that always seems almost like cheating to me. After all, you’re going to spend hours pondering your pumpkin, then cleaning out and carving it. Might as well make sure it’s a good one. Supermarket pumpkins always seem a bit sad…and how can you make a jack-o-lantern out a sad pumpkin? You need a pumpkin with personality! Plus I have a thing for pumpkins so big I can barely carry them, which you’ll never find at the local Piggly-Wiggly. The past few years we’ve been acquiring our pumpkins from nearby Burger Farms. They have great-looking pumpkins in a variety of sizes. The trouble is that they sell them by the pound. So when I waddle up to the register with a 50-lb. pumpkin it hurts my wallet as much as my back. And while picking a pumpkin out of a bin at a farm is somewhat better than at a grocery store, it’s still out of a bin.

So this year, we decided we needed to pick a pumpkin right off the vine in an actual pumpkin patch. (Great Pumpkin sightings being a potential added bonus.) But how to find an actual pumpkin patch where you can buy pumpkins? Google Local turned out to be my friend. I sized the map up to include everything within about an hours drive of Cincinnati and then searched for “pumpkin patch.” Bingo! Arlyn Farms. For us, it was a straight shot out Rt. 125 just a bit past Georgetown. Brown County is always gorgeous this time of year as the trees begin to show off their fall foliage. We really weren’t sure what to expect as we headed down the narrow country lane to the farm, but as the farm came in sight, we could see happy orange pumpkins gleaming in the fall sunlight as they nestled comfortably in their patch. Exactly what we were after! After traipsing around through the pumpkin patch, we made our selections and headed back to make our purchase. The bill was a pleasant surprise: large pumpkins are $5, small ones are $2. That’s about the same as getting moldy pumpkins from the grocery store. With gas prices these days we probably spent more on the gas getting there than we did on the pumpkins.

It turns out Arlyn Farms has a pumpkin festival every year, but we’d missed it for this year. We’ll have to check it out next year. Next up, carving the pumpkins. Stay tuned.