Fall is a great time to plan a family visit to your local pumpkin farm! While you are there, you will usually find many opportunities to play together, take some family photos and pick out a pumpkin. We spent a Saturday at Beck’s Harvest House in Colbert, WA. The kids enjoyed interacting with many of the fall family activities and exploring the 5 acre core maze!
Plan a Family Day
Many pumpkin farms coordinate a fall harvest festival for families to spend a day outdoors. They usually bring in extra activities and create corn mazes, hay bale mazes and often offer seasonal treats! Beck’s Harvest House in Washington hosts their harvest festival during the weekends in October. You can buy tickets for $10 per person to enjoy all the family-friendly activities, including bounce houses, climbing play structures, a kids cow train ride pulled by a tractor and more!
Ride on a Cow Train
A ride on the cow train pulled by a tractor was a fun activity for my kids to do together. At other farms, variations of this could include a tractor ride, hay ride or wagon ride. Sometimes a hay ride allows you to see different parts of the farm from a unique vantage point. Other farms often take visitors to the pumpkin patch fields so you can pick out a pumpkin and catch a ride back to the farm store.
Get Some Exercise
The pumpkin farm we visited set up a variety of family activities for their fall festival days. Kids could run inside a big pipe to roll it along a track, bounce on a variety of bounce houses and jump on a huge pillow-like inflated trampoline. My girls also enjoyed exploring the hay bale maze which towered over my 4-year-old’s head (the effect was kinda lost on me). We spent some time navigating the paths and laughing when we ran into dead ends throughout the hay bale maze.
Explore a Corn Maze
The farm we visited also had a 5-acre corn maze with lots of paths, shortcuts and towering cornstalks complete with overripe ears of corn. The corn field was cool and had an earthy fragrance. Corn mazes are a great place for families to get some exercise, play follow the leader and take some photos!
Slide Down a Tire Slide
Beck’s Harvest House also had a custom slide with steps made from tires which kids could climb up. My kids always enjoy a unique way to get exercise and at slides likes this, they often want to climb up and slide down over and over again. There’s nothing like good old farm fun, right?
Go on a Hayride
Hayrides are a classic farm activity, which often take you to the pumpkin fields! A hayride allows families to visit the pumpkin patch which can be way out in the fields, choose their pumpkins and enjoy a ride back to the farm store and parking lot.
Pick Out a Pumpkin
You can usually find pumpkins of all sizes at a pumpkin farm. Some farms sell them by weight, by size, or charge one price for any pumpkin. The farm we visited made it easy to pick out a pumpkin by piling them in one location, although we lost the fun of picking them straight off the vine.
Climb on a Spider Web
Becks Harvest House offered a great variety of family activities for the price of those $10 tickets. In addition to the tire step slide, bounce houses, hay bale maze and 5-acre corn maze, kids could also climb on a web-like play structure and pretend to be spiders. My kids also had fun trying to drive a small manual go-kart around a track, which tired them out quickly and made them hungry for a snack!
Enjoy Seasonal Treats
Harvest festival treats usually don’t disappoint! You can often choose from caramel apples, freshly-made pumpkin doughnuts and classic carnival food from food trucks and mobile food vendors. We picked out a bag of caramel kettle popcorn to munch on the way home.
Get Your Face Painted
My kids always love getting their face painted and choosing their favorite design. You can usually choose from simple designs such as a heart or flower on your cheek, or go for the full face superhero mask or fairy-inspired face paint design.
Take Lots of Photos
Don’t forget to take photos! We make some of our best memories during family days out and my kids enjoy looking at the photos afterwards. Taking memorable family photos is a great way to share your experiences with your extended family and friends who weren’t able to join you on your family outing.
What have been some of your favorite fall family adventures?
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Hi, I’m Katie! I live with my husband and 4 kids in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I love Jesus, coffee, creative projects, photography, and traveling. I’ve previously worked as a web designer, journalist, and barista. I hope you enjoy our creative projects and family adventures!