Pumpkin Patch Shenanigans

Oya everyone!

So it kinda figures that the one month I’m doing a set thing every week for this blog is the most bloggable month I’ve had, right?

October was wack, in the absolute best way.

SO much happened, and I wanted to tell you guys about some of it. Mostly the pumpkin patch adventures.

Now.

Some of you may never have been to a pumpkin patch before. Myself, I can’t imagine a life without them, but Ari has informed me that she has never been to one, they simply don’t have them in her region. That sounds extremely sad to me. Going to pumpkin patches in October is like . . . not even just a family event, it’s a whole community holiday. The big famous pumpkin patch in our area (which I will not say the name of because of reasons) always has a specific day for homeschooled families (which is always cancelled due to weather and rescheduled without fail) and basically everybody we know comes and we all shenanigan ourselves into exhaustion together.

However, this is not the only one in the area. There are in fact MANY small pumpkin patches, apple orchards, sooooo many all with varying degrees of effort put into them. We went to a smaller one out a few towns away from where we live with a group of friends that includes Gavin and Jacob, that some of you may know from my Youtube channel. This was for another friend’s birthday party.

So we got there after I got off work, the sun was in that low-hanging orangey position that is just the best thing in autumn. We were the first there which led to some awkward faffing about as we wondered are we sure this is the right place, what if we’re wrong, you know how it goes. But then Jacob showed up and we were no longer worried. The others arrived in rapid succession, and the shenanigans commenced with Gavin tossing a chunk of rotten pumpkin in someone’s general direction.

As it should be.

This particular patch’s main attraction was a Haunted Corn Maze that would be open once night fell, but there were plenty of daytime activities as well. Animal pens were everywhere, housing alpacas, chickens, goats, horses, and some giant fluffy St Bernard-ish dogs affectionately dubbed ‘boofers’. Cats darted here and there taunting us with their fluffy tails and tiny toes, leading us into the massive barn at the center of the property.

The boys and I were immediately drawn to the three ancient arcade machines against one wall and Jacob started speedrunning Mario just immediately. The others went around and explored the building. Aside from the arcade machines, there was a kennel for the dogs surrounded by hay bales to keep it kind of hidden, a little play area (which, oddly, was filled with the play area stuff from the mall that was recently torn down. I may or may not have had a tiny existential crisis seeing those things. I mean . . . I used to be tiny, man) and a walled-in corner filled with Spooky Things(tm).

Also a corner devoted to creepy dolls and FNAF-esque stuffies but we kinda avoided that for obvious reasons, we watch Game Theory, we knows what’s up.

But the Spooky Things(tm) area was interesting because sitting on a folding chair was a man with a wolf head, completely motionless. The girls were all going in, like, hesitantly, giggling to each other and pointing at different creepy paintings or skulls or whatnot. I watched, and I knew that the guy was a real person just chilling. You could just see him breathing, and no mannequin sits all diagonal and floppy like that without being all lumpy and obviously fake.

The screaming scared me even if the guy moving didn’t. It was loud. But then we were all laughing hysterically so it was fine. Then everyone else came over to see what was going on, and got jumpscared again. The wolf-man was dubbed Jeremy/Jeremiah (we were never sure which) and Gavin gave him the present of a rubber rat. This began the trend of the night, a practical application of my favorite strategical philosophy:

When in a scary or dangerous situation, making friends with the danger is the best way to not get murdered.

This strategy has served me well in many a game of Assassin’s Creed and Hypixel Murder Mystery, and this night was no exception.

After failing to make Jeremy/miah laugh (man’s got the acting skills of a Buckingham Palace guard) we headed off to the hayrack ride up to the Haunted House.

Just us like . . . eleven? Twelve? teenagers on the back of a tractor trailer full of hay bales, with one family of tiny children watching us fearfully.

A very appropriate reaction.

The haunted house was actually just in the garage of a house that was probably the owner’s. Comprised of a winding pitch black corridor, the spookiness was created by having a series of scary mannequin things in little cages in the walls.

Not that I saw any of this.

No, I was brave enough to enter, but I spent the entire walk with my face shoved into someone’s back and saw absolutely nothing.

To my credit I wasn’t actually scared of any of the jumpscare gimmicks; I was afraid of the tiny, horribly narrow pitch black hallway. Seriously the thing was like three feet wide. Awful.

After the haunted house we moved on to the little kid area on the other side of the barn (Jeremy/miah was nowhere to be seen at this point. This was concerning but not enough to prompt a search, as we figured he was off doing wolf-man things). Jacob and I sat on the seesaw and watched the others play tetherball and smack each other in the face and ride around on little baby bikes. Emily commandeered a tiny playhouse and turned it into a restaurant that sold corn, cooked corn, wet corn, and corn with ~garnish~.

Gavin then became a Doordasher for her restaurant and delivered it to us on the seesaw in the trunk of a teeny tiny child’s tricycle.

Then Lucas picked up and removed the house because Emily had been doing tax evasion.

I guess this is how teenagers play house?

Eventually we left the pumpkin patch to head to a real restaurant (no disrespect to Corn Cottage, of course) and came back once the sun had set and the air became proper cold. Once again, we were the first there as the others had stopped at a gas station, so it was me, Emily, Gavin, Jacob, and the other Ashley.

At the entrance the owner man was selling these, like, giant glowsticks, except they weren’t glowsticks, they were like small foam tubes with flashing LEDs in.

Gavin bought ten.

The others immediately looked into them at point blank range and ruined their night vision. I slid them into the sleeves of my hoodie and activated them at comically appropriate moments. It was a good deal all around.

The others showed up but we were waiting on a few more people, so we began milling about as people do. In the dark the place became entirely different, not least because it was cold now. Stark white streetlights here and there, nobody else but us and the workers. A few of us gathered again at the arcade games.

Gavin was buried alive in a corn pit.

Oh wait you might not know what a corn pit is.

Well, basically, you know a sandbox? It’s like that, but with corn. Super fun surprisingly. It’s just a thing we have here, dunno if it’s a thing anywhere else but every out of state person I’ve talked to has been either disturbed or concerned so I’m guessing not.

So yeah Gavin almost died in a corn pit, then we decided to go into the corn maze without the people we were waiting for, and then simply go through again when they showed up.

And this is where is gets fun.

Enemies were made.

Children were pelted with corn.

It was an adventure.

How this corn maze worked, see, it wasn’t an actual maze. More like one winding path with several loops and dead ends branching off. Every so often, there would be a child hidden in the corn.

Yes.

A child.

Terrifying enough, that is, without mentioning the fact that they were dressed in genuinely scary costumes. Or they would have been scary, had they jumpscared me.

They didn’t.

It’s kind of weird, like, I was so consumingly terrified of the haunted house. But I felt nothing in this corn maze. I had a strategy and it worked, so there was nothing to fear.

I walked ahead of the rest of the group, something universally considered a bad idea, and ‘triggered the jumpscares’ by looking really closely and then screaming “AYUP!” and activating my sleeve glowsticks when I saw someone. They would emerge, mildly confused, and I would cheerfully say hello and compliment them and then move on. Absolutely foolproof, and the actors themselves thought it was hilarious.

The only one who did not get this treatment was a particular little girl with a baby doll and a drill. At this Jacob and I looked at each other, screamed. “IT’S ALICE!” and booked it giggling hysterically.

(That’s a reference to my latest Youtube video, which is really funny and you should watch it because yeah)

We went through this maze more than once, when the people showed up who we’d been waiting for. Jacob and I went ahead and hid in the corn ourselves (at one point scaring one of the actors, poor thing) and then at the exact right moment Jacob rushed out and slid across the dirt right in front of them merely to nod his head and say ‘sup’.

We had a good time.

More stuff happened after that but to be honest I barely remember, it had gotten late and we were all deliriously tired.

It was a good day.

Then, just the other day, we went to the other pumpkin patch, the big one, with mostly a different group. A lot happened but not much, like, describable?

Except for the war.

Yeah we started a war with small children.

So they have this huge barn, right, and the entire thing is filled with air-pressure systems that fling these foam balls everywhere, and there are blasters and several levels of fortress with whole turrets and pulley systems and tubes to send ammunition up and down. Emily and I climbed up to one of the two highest positions and started shooting this turret. The kids in our group caught on and started sending us ammo. Soon the army grew and about half the kids in there were scuttling around scooping foam balls into little sacks and hoisting them up three stories to us, cheering as Emily blasted poor random people with these projectiles. Some of them ignored it, some of them were confused. One guy took a ball to the shoulder and did a whole dramatic death scene for us, which was epic. Our minions got into a fight with some kid, I think one of them bit his nose which is just concerning.

But it was really fun.

I should mention that this sort of thing happens literally any time we are any sort of playground with other children. I don’t know why.

Halloween was also fantastic. This year’s costume was probably the most elaborate I’ve ever done. I was Wilbur Soot (more specifically Revivedbur, but that’s besides the point). It was incredible, I never wanted to take the costume off. We went trick or treating with a couple friends and I played my guitar as we walked and people were impressed so our group got extra candy from a few houses. It was also really stinking cold so we didn’t stay out as late as we would have in previous years, but it was plenty of time anyhow.

October was just great, okay, I loved it. How did your October go? Did you dress up? Any pumpkin patch shenanigans? Apple orchards perhaps? What kinds of stupid stuff might you and your friends have gotten up to? I want to hear about this, for science.

See you next week!

~Ace