Every year around the first weekend of October, Princess Nagger and I make a trek to find corn stalks, hay bales and pumpkins to decorate the front porch for fall. I tend to do a more ‘generic’ fall decor that will suffice not only for Halloween, but through Thanksgiving, at which time I’ll switch out the fall decor for Christmas.

Though I really want to get one of those 6-foot skeletons they had at Costco (since that’s the cheapest place), but I forgot to go there early enough for when they had the fall and Halloween decor on sale, since they switched over the Christmas before October 1st (as did most other places – which is sacrilegious if you ask me!), so maybe next year. I better start looking in August. I think it’d be cool to have it sitting on the porch swing for fun.

At any rate, this year I decided to source the corn stalks and pumpkins elsewhere, because the farm we bought them from last year seemed excessively expensive compared to the local farm I’d get those items from out in PA. We ended up getting the pumpkins at Walmart and the cornstalks from a small local farmer off Craigslist. The hay bales, however, were problematic, because finding decently priced hay bales – or any hay bales at all – seems to be scarce.

Princess Nagger and I spent the day driving around randomly, stopping at various pumpkin patches and other areas seeking out the ever elusive hay bales after we loaded up the back of the car with pumpkins, gourds and Indian Corn.

We ultimately ended up at the same farm and pumpkin patch we went to last year, because we knew they at least had straw bales there:

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While Princess Nagger is less and less willing to pose for pictures, she did humor me for a great pumpkin patch shot:

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We lucked out – it had been raining earlier that day, but as the day progressed the clouds dispersed and the sun came out to make it a glorious afternoon.

This particular farm always has a giant pile of sawdust for the kids to play on – Princess Nagger likes to run up it and survey the land, sort of like ‘King of the Hill’ mode:

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And of course roll around on it, effectively covering herself in sawdust. The important thing was she was having fun:

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We picked up the straw bales, checked out the various farm animals they had in the barn to admire, then headed home to put together the porch decor.

Well, OK, I put together the porch decor, she was simply my ride-along and pumpkin chooser, but one of these days I bet she’ll help with the decorating part:

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The straw bales are not very big and very loosely tied, so next year I’m going to start earlier and try to find actual hay bales instead. You know, nice and big and square and heavy. I’m sure there’s a farm around here somewhere that sells them, I’ll just need to find a regular place to get those from like I did in PA.

What’s cool is whether it’s straw or hay, those bales serve multiple purposes – first as the fall decor, then I’ll cover them with a white plastic table cloth to look like small snowy hills when I put out my Christmas decor, then they’ll serve as cover for any seeds we plant in the spring to keep the birds from stealing the seeds that get planted. Recycling at it’s best!

I love that Princess Nagger and I have made the search for fall decor an annual tradition – I’m hoping as she gets older, and when she eventually grows up and moves out, that we can continue that tradition for years to come.

Do you have traditions you share with your kids that you either hope will continue as they grow up, or have been continued after they’ve grown up?

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7 Comments

  1. It is a cool tradition. And I agree those skeletons would have looked cool on the porch swing, but I like your scarecrow family and the porch looks great.

  2. Looks like great fun! We really have to get moving on Halloween – we’re still in the “changing costume ideas each day” phase!

  3. That’s so cool – we don’t have pumpkin patches like that in the UK 🙁 Your littl’un is adorable!

  4. We did a scary(ish) pumpkin last year and we are going to up our Halloween game this year haha. We dont have pumpkin patch but we do have the green grocers near our house and I am waiting for them to reduced the price of the pumpkin before I get one or 2!

    Your decoration is amazing!

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