The Pumpkin Patch

Strawberry Hollow Farm is a landmark of Guilford Ct.
A must see if you are in the mood for an old fashioned
experience and perfect for this time of year.

The building is heated the old fashioned way with a wood stove which keeps it’s customers toasty warm.

The farmers SIL who now runs the gift shop

said at times it’s so warm the doors are left open to let the heat out.

Another building where the pumpkins are stored.

 

We try to make it over every year. We came almost 3 weeks ago

which is why you still see the leaves on  the trees and they are

GREEN!!!

He told us this was the most photographed sign of all.

But this was his favorite.

He used to have it displayed right by the field but he decided that

some of the folks would take offense to it so he removed it.

Some people have no sense of humor!!!!

Turned out that it was also stolen a few times too.

To get to the field you have to walk down a long steep driveway

but the view from above is like a postcard.

The mammoth pumpkins are usually sold in advanced

so he stores them away so as not to entice other customers.

He was kind enough to show them to us anyways.

I’d be proud of these too.

The difficult part is keeping the squirrels from eating

them so he leaves a few

outside that they’ve already started to nibble on
so they don’t try eating all of them.

Tomorrow we will finally carve our pumpkin before

going to a Halloween Party.

Have you gotten your pumpkin yet???

or going to a Party????

Happy Halloween!

Strawberry Hollow Farm is a true landmark in

Guilford Connecticut.  Located on Boston Post rd it’s so popular that they have to hire traffic cops

 to keep the traffic flowing on the weekends.

It’s small building is charming and filled with

decorations for the season.

Right after Halloween the store transforms into a Christmas shop full of charming country decorations typical of

New England.

Where do they come from?

Most people don't give these plants much thought.

They just show up every Fall,

whether at your garden center, your farm stand,

grocery store of box store.

 Years ago we used to grow them ourselves...but with limited space

we've bought them the last few years.

Don't ask me why but George wanted to see them for himself.

So we took a ride.

At first I thought I'd better stay home and get something done

but it was a beautiful day

so why not?

I don't miss setting them up on drip tubes but in the end

it saved a lot of time.

You might be wondering why they're not in flower,

but as the crops start to bud up and

as we say " crack color"

they get shipped out.

Yep me!

Except for a handful of workers it was rather quiet.

Being around 5 in the afternoon might explain it

but it's so enjoyable just seeing everything just quietly growing.

Poinsettia's that have been growing for 2 months now.

There's a lot more work to growing them then you might think.

Shading, applying growth regulators to keep them from getting too stretched out.

I know you'll never believe me but they really aren't as poisonous as

people would have you think.

You'd have to eat a whole plant to make you sick.

If you ate that much of any euphorbia you'd get sick or for that matter any tropical plant.

Poinsettias come orginally from Mexico.

You probably knew that already.

We couldn't come without inspecting the pumpkins

of course.

and all the different gourds

just having fun.

for those of you who don't do

ORANGE
you know who you are:))

One of my favorites are the white ones.

I remember about 10 yrs ago when Georges dad would

grow them....they were more scarce then

but not now.

I thought everyone was familar with them but I had a customer

 the other day that had never seen them.

***

Well off to try and make something of the rest of your day off.

Hope you all are enjoying Fall as much as we are.

I'll be back with pictures of my finds from Brimfield.

Just wanted to share a bit of the season with you.