Just as much as I love apple picking, I also really love pumpkin picking. There’s something about spending the day outdoors with my family that I just can’t get enough of. I truly enjoy watching my children explore and search for their “perfect” pumpkins.
SEE ALSO: Confreda Farm – Family Fun For Everyone & Apple Picking With The Family Plus Apple Recipes
Pumpkin Picking At Confreda Farm
Every year my husband and I take our boys pumpkin picking in early October. It’s a family tradition that we all look forward to. The boys love the hayrides out to the pumpkin patch and my husband and I love to watch them run in the fields looking for their perfect pumpkins. This year we decided to try a different farm than the one we usually go to. Now that our boys are a little older, we wanted to find a larger farm with more to do than just pumpkin picking. We had heard such wonderful things about Confreda Farm, that we decided to give it a try. We were so impressed! The hayride was much longer than what we had been on in previous years and the pumpkin patch was huge. The boys thoroughly enjoyed examining the many piles of pumpkins and choosing their favorite ones. Once they picked out the four pumpkins they wanted to bring home, we hopped back onto the hayride to head back for lunch at Confreda’s and then home to paint our pumpkins. 
Painting Pumpkins
Once we got home and all woke up from our naps (me included), it was time to paint our pumpkins! The boys were so looking forward to this. I find acrylic paint to be the best option for painting pumpkins. It holds up great and is thick enough to cover the pumpkins without a problem. Painting pumpkins with little ones can get pretty messy so just place your pumpkin on top of some paper and go with it. Children are meant to be messy and messes can be cleaned! I like to get in on the action with my boys and paint as well. They each painted the small pumpkins they picked and then we all painted the big pumpkin and the third little pumpkin together. 
I have to admit that I am a bit of a perfectionist. I am that person who would go pumpkin picking and look for the most perfectly round, perfectly orange, no dents, no bruises, big pumpkin. Once I found MY perfect pumpkin, I would take it home and carve or paint this elaborate image onto it and proudly display it on my front steps. Once my boys came along, all of that quickly went out the window. It suddenly didn’t matter what the pumpkins looked like. What mattered was the smiles on their faces when they chose the smallest, ugliest, oval shaped, completely flat on one side, partially green pumpkins that they thought were “just perfect”. And when we took them home to paint them, it no longer mattered what the end result was. All that mattered was the excitement that they each felt as they mixed all of our beautiful paint colors into one giant blob of grey paint and smeared it all over their pumpkins. Now, proudly displayed on our front steps are my boys’ beautiful masterpieces. Every time I walk by those pumpkins, I think of the amazing day we had picking them out, and painting them together. In my eyes, THAT is perfection.
