Liberty Mills Farm Outing

On Saturday I visited Liberty Mills Farm in Somerset, VA. This is their first year growing pumpkins, creating a corn maze and providing other activities to the public. You can visit their website here.

The corn maze is divided up into several parts. The time to complete them ranges from 20 minutes to 4 hours. Can you guess which portion I traveled through?  That's right, I am not much of a walker. 

The owner told me that they plant the corn on a grid system with the rows planted in 30 inch swaths. They plant the field north to south and then go back and plant it again east to west. That makes the rows come up like graph paper. Then when it was time to cut the maze out they used a grid drawing to determine where to cut the paths. The maze is hand cut, probably with a mower of some kind.

Here is a view of the pumpkin field from the kiddy section of the corn maze.

One of the farm's collection of John Deere tractors.  Nice!

They planted 10 varieties of pumpkins at the farm this year. It was interesting to see the different kinds available.  Of course, I only wanted cool, weirdly colored and textured pumpkins. I can get plain orange ones at the grocery store.  These were all priced by size, except for the really big ones, which they weigh before pricing.

 Right before I went to the maze I saw a tree dropping Osage Oranges on the fenceline. After inquiring of the farm owner about them, he had his son gather a couple of dozen of the wonderful green balls for me.  No extra charge!  I love to decorate in the fall with Osage Oranges, but usually have a hard time finding them.  Love them!

I also picked up some gourds which were grown on the farm. Later the same day I stopped at a flower/produce stand in the town of Orange and got some apples, an oddly shaped green pumpkin and some great photos.  The bounty of the season is displayed by my porch now.

Later I will tell about the quilt show I saw on Saturday, also in Orange. I didn't know about it ahead of time, but got directions from the nice folks at the farm.

Gale