Our Trip to Valewood Farms

 

I’m not a fan of the weather getting cooler but I do love fall activities. Almost every year we try to pay a visit to a local farm in our area. That farm is always Valewood Farms in Loretto, PA.  Honestly there are farms a bit closer to us but the affordability, the activities, and of course the dairy store is a big draw for us.

For the wee little ones they always love the corn box.  It’s basically a big sandbox type area filled with dried corn.  They have buckets and shovels there for the kids.  My kids could spend an hour in there if I let them.

 

They change it up a little each year.  Add things, take things away, tweek things a little. Keeps it interesting.  They have a hayride that’s just $2 per person and the hayride last for a little over half an hour.  They take you over the whole farm. Show you an original home built a century ago by the family that started the farm.  They talk to you about the area and where they supply their dairy products.  They take you to the area where they milk the cows and you get to see baby cows too.

They usually have a haymaze set up for the little ones.  This year they changed it up a bit and made a hay enclosure.  A sort of hay playground if you will. It had a slide, a game, a big tire to climb through and more.

 

The older boys loved climbing on the hay bales and I got this really cool picture too!

 

They had a corn maze too.  Normally the corn maze is fun.  It has fun farm trivia questions to help you find your way.  It has enough turns to make it interesting but not so many that the kids get scared or lost.  Unfortunately, the day we went it was extremely muddy.  A lot of the trail was up hill and I had the jogging stroller.  We were slipping and sliding in the mud. My youngest son did fall and land right on his but.  Our shoes and the bottom of our pants were a muddy mess.  We couldn’t even finish the maze because there was a BIG slope and I couldn’t get enough footing to push the stroller up so we had to turn around and go back out.  Oh well.  But I did get another cool pic of my middle son in the corn maze hamming it up. You can see how muddy the trail was in this pic too.

 

The 2nd to  last stop for us is the pumpkin patch.  I love the fresh selection and the prices are so reasonable.  This year they had white pumpkins and red pumpkins.

 

What I  like about Valewood farms is that you don’t pay for the pumpkins by weight.  They had a sign up, wish I would have took a picture, but orange carving pumpkins were $5-$7 depending on size.  All white and red pumpkins were $4. Sugar pumpkins were $3 and little pumpkins were $2.  My boys actually really liked the white pumpkins because they were huge. Both my older boys pick a white pumpkin, my youngest son got an orange pumpkin and we got my daughter a little pumpkin.  My son wanted to weigh his pumpkin when we got home.  51 lbs!! No joke and it cost us $4 for a big fresh white pumpkin.

If you notice the cages in the back, they have farm animals that the kids could see up close: goats, turkeys, and chickens.  They also had a special area for a very special cow this year.  Baby Ben was born on the farm this summer.  Of course this is Steeler’s country.  Big Ben the quarterback for the Steeler’s..his number is 7 and well…let’s see if you can guess why they call this little guy Baby Ben:

 

Do you see it? Do you see it?

We loaded the pumpkins into our vehicle after we paid for them then stopped in the ice cream shop.  We each got an ice cream cone with some fresh Valewood Farms ice cream.  My daughter got birthday cake, my youngest son and I chose the Rasberry Chocolate truffle, my middle son chose Teaberry, and My oldest son got Moose Tracks.

It was a chilly day but we enjoyed ourselves anyway.  We always love our trips to Valewood Farms. It’s become a yearly tradition.  Unfortunately their pumpkin patch is closed now with all the activities but they’ll do it again next year.  Hope to see you there!

For more reasons to visit your local farms, check out my guest  post