Frogtown Blogger

Wow, It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a month since I wrote in this blog.  What a month it’s been!  Our son, Ryan, got married in Reno, NV, on August 1.  That was a fun trip.  Besides the beautiful wedding, we visited old Virginia City and gorgeous Lake Tahoe.  Also, I finished up my chemo treatments yesterday.  They started in March and were every other week.  So now, they’re finished in time for the Pumpkin Patch season and hopefully  I can keep up with Paul.

We’ve had a very wet and cool summer (my kind of weather), but unfortunately, its not the greatest for crops.  About the middle of August, we finally hit a 90 degree day and we’ve had a fair amount of sunshine.  This has really brought on the pumpkin crop, to Paul’s great relief.  Looks like the crop will be good and we should have a nice variety of pumpkins, gourds and squash for our customers.   Another crop that we weren’t planning on were the 20 lambs born this summer.  Normally, our lambs come in February but someone got a little rambunctious this spring and we had lambs popping out everyday for awhile.  Oh well, the kids will love seeing them with their mothers.  Another unexpected event was the birth of another baby goat. Pumpkin was born last fall  and he got a little sister, Petunia, this spring. After that the Billy Goat Pete got moved to the sheep field pronto.

We’re pretty excited about this fall.  We have a nice line-up of entertainment for the weekends.  Phyllis Howard will be back several times this year with her dulcimer and Bill Stumpf, our wonderful storyteller, will be back on two different Saturdays.  We lined up a food vender for both Saturday and Sunday and may have a kettle corn concesson as well on a few days.

On October 17-18, we plan to host a pumpkin flinging festival.  Paul has been in conctact with several area guys who are intrigued with the idea of a friendly little match-up of machines.  It could get interesting.  Our sons couldn’t resist missing this event and all three will be here.  Every mother’s dream!

On the last three nights,Oct 29-31, we are going to run night hayrides from 6 to 9.  They will run on the hour and hopefully, we’ll have some kid-friendly spooks in the woods to liven things up a bit.

We’ve also been adding some improvements.  One big addition is the new road through the woods for the hayrides.  It is much more gradual than the old road. which was too much of a thrill for Paul.  The Frogtown Flinger is going to have some additions and we’re to have two much improved Slingers down in the farmyard.  We’re going to put an old cooler out in the field with a target for the slingers.  Another exciting development was the purchase of a 30′ x 30′ circus tent.  All of our picnic tables should fit comfortably underneath it to provide shade for the sunny days and shelter for the drizzly days (let’s hope that there are not going to be too many of those). Yet to be accomplished, but in the works, are additonal lights, a water system for the shed and a hay mountain for the kids to climb on.  We also hope to have more signs painted for various areas

The next two weeks are going to be extremely busy around the farm.  Paul is working to hard to get the second crop hay in.  Once we start working on the Patch , there won’t be time to make hay.  We’re happy that most of our employees are coming back this fall.  They did a good job for us last year and will know the ropes already.  I still remember how befuddling the first day was last year.  We were making it up as we went.  Hopefully, September 19 this fall will much better.

Linda (Hanging on for the ride)

Make sure to check out our new and improved home page! www.paulspumpkinpatch.com
The pictures from last year have never looked so good!

COMING SOON:
Painted Pumpkin Contest judged October 24!
Plenty of Prizes
Contest detail to be posted

With all the rain we’ve had recently, the pumpkins are growing like crazy.  Paul was smart and tilled them before we got into this wet spell.

Paul gets to use his new tiller.

So this year, we don’t have the terrible weed problem that we had last year That’s not to say that there aren’t any weeds.

Tyler and Shane make the weeds disappear.

We hired some good teenage workers to pull weeds between the rows the other day.  They dillently worked one day at it from 9 AM to 5 PM. and got the worst of them.

Things are hopping at the Stahlman Farm these days.  Paul had a week of good hay weather so the pumpkins took the back seat.  That’s not to say, we’ve totally forgotten about them though.  Last week, our 30′ x 30′ tent was delivered.  We’ll get to set it up at the Clarion County Fair, July 26-Aug 1, for the free stage area.  We’re donating the use of it as fair sponsors.  I’m curious to see what it looks like since it is a used tent.

Several weeks ago, we had a gourd cleaning party.  We hired three teenage boys to scrub the gourds that dried out over the winter.  We set them up with a wash tub full of warm chlorox water, rubber gloves and

scrub pads.  I think they enjoyed the job and got a fair number of them done.  At least, it was less taxing than the hay they helped with that same day.

There were snake, swan and birdhouse gourds. They’ll be ready for folks to make into birdhouses or use in crafts.  We have also contacted several artists about painting them and the little pumpkins that we’ll have ready in September. It will be interesting to see how they turn out.

We have our brochure just about ready to be printed. Also, we decided to take an ad on placemats for restaurants and to advertise on the radio again.  Always lots and lots of decisions to be made.

I took a class on website design for businesses last week and now we want to change the look of our website somewhat.  Our son Matt has been a huge help in this area.  Its been fun collaborating with him over the details.  I love how this younger generation has taken on so easily the Internet and all the new computer technology.  We old foggies really have work hard to rearrange our brain cells to grasp it.  All three of our sons have helped to pull Mom and Dad along.

That’s it for now.  By the way, the pumpkins are looking very promising.

Linda

I guess its time to start the blog saga of the 2009 Pumpkin Patch.  The pumpkins are planted and our recent rains have them popping up like crazy.  Paul has planted 45
varieties of pumpkins, gourds and squash.  He took suggestions from our customers and poured over the seed catalogs this winter to find unique plants to grow.  We also have a large quantitiy of birdhouse and snake gourds that dried out nicely this winter.  We want to clean them up and have them for sale for folks who like to do crafts with them.
We’ve been throwing around a lot of new ideas for the Patch this fall.  One thing would be a hay mountain for the little kids to climb on and to hold some family-oriented pumpkin
carving and painting contests.  Our dulcimer players and storyteller are willing to come back.  We’re looking for food vendors for both Saturdays and Sundays.  Hopefully, we’ll have a 30′ x 40′ tent to protect folks from the weather.

The trebuchet pumpkin thrower was a huge hit last year and Paul is working on holding a local pumkin chunkin contest.  That could be interesting!

We got exciting news last week.  Farm and Ranch Magazine called us and want us to do a diary article for them centered on October 15 to November 15 this fall.  Paul sent an email several months back and figured that they weren’t interested when we didn’t hear anything back quickly.  But they do want us!  They will send in a professional photographer to do the pictures for the article.  I’ve kept a diary since I was twelve so this will be easy for me.  They’ll probably have to edit a bunch out.  Our son Matt, of Apache Junction, AZ, will be in helping up during that time, so he’ll get to be part of the action as well.  Paul is tickled to death with this development.

Linda

They must have driven their camera van down route 66 last fall. Now you can see our signs all year long!

All good things have to come to an end and so it is for Paul’s Pumpkin Patch for 2008. We’re already thinking of things
to make it bigger and better for next year. Boy, did we ever learn a lot in the last four months! We never dreamed that this would go as well as it did.
It was a lot of hard work, but we reached many of our goals. One was to provide a real farm experience for families to enjoy. Apparently, that is what
folks want because many said that they’d be back next year.

We had quite a roller coaster ride with weather this past week. Rain and then snow on Wednesday. Thursday was clear, sunny but chilly.
By Saturday afternoon, we were out working in our t-shirts again. Business tapered off drastically this past week and that was disappointing
after all the excitement we’ve been having. Next year we’ll have to create some excitement to bring folks in.

So, this is it until next fall. Time for us to catch up with friends and family and life in general.

Linda

Although it was a beautiful sunny day, business was slow, only slightly better than yesterday. Paul only ran two hayrides this afternoon. Our good friends the Gruvers came and Paul enjoyed taking them on the hayride and showing them the Frogtown Flinger. They actually got to see two pumpkin throws because the first one went backwards. Duke tickled us when he went chasing the pumpkins and came trotting back with it. I guess he has more retriever in him than we thought. Dave had to see it all up close and then he was pleased to drive the old Farmall H down to the barnyard for Paul.

Only one more week to go. We’ve sold hundreds of pumpkins and it still looks like we have a good supply. Next Saturday, we’re going to slash our prices and try to clear out the place. Otherwise, they’ll end up as pig feed.

Linda