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- Paradise Camp |
McKenzie River: Herrick FarmOne day we stopped at the local pumpkin patch farm -- Herrick Farm (I couldn't find a web site). In farm country close to the Portland area, showing a farm to the city folk is big business. There are lots of vegetables, cider, apple cakes, specialty salad dressings, etc. for the grown-ups to buy in addition to pumpkins and fall gourds and flowers. And many times there's a huge, elaborate corn maze; the Portland paper runs aerial shots of the half dozen best in the area, so you can pick your theme -- Lewis and Clark, a cornucopia, whatever. There are even people who make a living designing corn mazes, which are then rendered by a computer into a map of the rows and gaps that the farmer plants. (Here's a maize maze company from Utah that has worked in Oregon and through out the U.S.) Sometimes there's a haunted house in connection with the harvest festival activities. Oh, and one of the area farms even has a little train you can pay to ride around through the fields. Any of them is an okay country experience but pretty commercialized, waiting in line for the maze or the train and so on.Herrick's is probably the way they mostly started out. The "store" is in what was clearly the old barn (and possibly is still in use in other seasons, surely to store nuts and apples and hay, if not animals). They sell a nice variety of vegetables, pumpkins, decorative gourds, Indian corn, hazelnuts, lots and lots of apples and a few little gee-gaws. The difference is that I'm pretty sure all the produce is either grown on the spot or possibly on a son-in-law's or neighbor's farm. They have a few animals to look at, two weaner pigs, 6 or 8 young goats and a llama. They were all cute and obviously scrubbed and trimmed up for their appearance. They have a pick-your-own-bouquet garden, but the zinnias were looking more than a little bedraggled. Herrick's gives free hayrides to the kids--and adults, too, I assume, but you're probably supposed to let the kids go first. When we were there, there were a bunch of 1st and 2nd graders all rosy-cheeked and sparkly, riding around with the farmer and chattering away. And although they sell corn, their maze is made of hay bales. The hay bale maze was clearly aimed at the little ones, the maze was about three bales tall and about 20' by 40' and under one of those big tarp tents. Here are the rules: No Running No Climbing on the Hay Have Fun We bought some vegetables and nuts and I bought a black glycerine soap in the shape of a bat and smelling of licorice for my grandson. They also had soap pumpkins, that smelled like pumpkin pie spices, and a soap ghost that didn't seem to smell like anything (well, that's logical, I guess). When we were paying I commented to the young woman helping us how clever the soaps were. "Oh, yeah," she said, unenthusiastically, "these are made by my high school boyfriend's mother. She used to make us help and we hated it. It was smelly and messy and we always tried to get out of it. So I don't really like them very much." It's all in the experience of the beholder. Next, the Christmas shop. |
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