Visit to The Farm

It was my first weekend in Everett but I soon learned that amongst three of my male colleagues – D, P and Y – P was usually the one researching and suggesting places we visited during our weekends. Since the rest of us were easygoing and had no inkling where to go, we gladly relinquished the right to him.

For my inaugural sightseeing trip, P decided on visiting a farm called ‘The Farm‘! That’s really the name, I kid you not! I was told we were going to take a look at the pumpkins available for sale, and the main attraction, the corn maze. I went along without any expectations since I wasn’t involved in the planning and decision process.

These were some of the pictures I captured while on the road when P was behind wheels. Loved how wide their highways are. Take a closer look at the 2nd picture if you will – those black dots on the grass… cows! Alright, I have seen cows in the wild but that was in Malaysia years ago as a child. I had to capture that shot fast since P literally stopped in the middle of the road to oblige me. Pays to be the only female in the group. 😆

We arrived at The Farm rather early, around 11am and the carpark was already quite packed! The picture above only captured half the width of the carpark so you could imagine the impressive size in its entirety.

The first place we stopped by was the Petting Station, where they had all types of farm animals from pigs, sheep, kittens to donkeys for the children to have close contact with. I wasn’t too keen to go look for a washroom to wash my hands after that, hence refrained from the activity. Immediately following, we walked over to the nearby hay maze meant for children and were all wondering why the maze was free for adults. It wasn’t until we walked in that we found out why.

As it turned out, even petite me was taller than the hay stack. It was still nice of the farm not to charge adults knowing it would not pose as any kind of challenge to anyone above 5 ft tall.

Next, we unanimously decided to pay the small fee of USD5 for entry into the corn maze. The adult version this round. After receiving an ink stamp (in the form of a picture of a cow) on our hands and a map each, we got up the wagons that would transport us to the entrance of the maze.

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Admittedly P and Y aka ‘Mr Pumpkin’ (who was wearing an orange shirt resembling the colour of pumpkins) seemed much less enthusiastic about the corn maze than I was. Or perhaps it was the glare annoying them.

Soon enough, we arrived at the entrance of the corn maze where we were dropped off and left on our own, equipped with a map provided to navigate our way.

The corn maze reminded me so much of the movie ‘The Signs’. Was it by Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson? While I don’t remember the actors, I sure recall vividly the freaky crop signs and aliens running about in the tall crop fields. My imagination was running wild as we cautiously began our walk through the maze.

More pictures were taken within the crop maze, and I realised that my male colleagues were taking more pictures of themselves than I was of myself haha. There were 3 ‘bridges’ within the maze where we could take in views of the whole maze at a vantage point. It was on one of these bridges that Y took a picture for me. I reckoned I could have enjoyed the maze better if not for the muddy ground. Eeks! Of all days, I chose that day to wear my Hush Puppies and not my boots.

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When we finally found our way out of the corn maze, the sight that greeted us was pumpkins in all shapes and sizes. Some of them were really quite huge, nothing like what we’ve ever seen in Singapore. Pumpkins, pumpkins and more pumpkins! We just kind of went crazy and starting shooting off (our cameras, i mean) like madmen at the pumpkin fields.

Shortly after, I learnt that they have an exceedingly interesting way of deciding how much each customer were to pay for the pumpkin they were buying. Arranged neatly in a row were about 10 pumpkins of various sizes. What you probably can’t see from the picture above were the prices written with a marker pen on every pumpkin. The little boy carrying the pumpkin in the picture just finished comparing his ‘treasure’ against the standard and came to the conclusion that his little pumpkin cost USD2.00. Seeing how cheap it really was, we decided to select a small pumpkin to bring back to our hotel totry cooking it. In the end we selected a very nice one for USD1.00.

We ended out trip with a pumpkin pie we bought at the bakery within the compounds of The Farm. Cost us USD10.00 for the whole pie of 6 slices. It was really yummy! Truth is, I didn’t used to be a fan of pumpkin, thinking it’s too sweet for my palate, but my opinion changed after tasting the fresh pumpkin pie. I  need this pie recipe!