field trip

This week I went on a field trip with three kindergarten/preschool classes to the Pumpkin farm. A local farmer has been giving away free pumpkins to school children for nearly 30 years, with roughly 1000 school children visiting his farm each fall day. It is quite an amazing thing and a very exciting event for the children. This field trip, however, was not what any of us expected…

First of all, we expected a sunny day with a crispness in the air, the kind of day that smells and feels like fall, the fall I love so much. It was bitterly cold with a cold wind blowing and rain sprinkling off and on. We expected the pumpkin patch to extend for miles with beautiful pumpkins of all sizes where each child could pick out just the right one to suit his or her desires. It extended for miles, but the pumpkins this year were exceptionally large (due to an unfortunate circumstance involving pigs and natural fertilizer; use your imagination), and last week’s hard freeze made a mess of the crop, many of them were already rotting. Plus, we were on the tail end of the thousand-a-day visitor roster, leaving us pretty slim pickin’s. We hadn’t thought the logistics through, either, for it was impossible to keep our children together in nice little groups, once they hit the pumpkin patch, they were everywhere and we had no way of rounding them up again. I guess we had naively expected they would just be drawn to us at the end of the search. It was somewhat of a miracle that only one child was lost (and thankfully, eventually found).

The teachers wisely decided to get one pumpkin per class, expecting the children would understand the nature of the dilemma we would have if every child picked out a 20-pound pumpkin, but some of the children had their little hearts set on a pumpkin of their very own and also picked out one for themselves. Now MY rule has always been, “You choose a pumpkin you can carry by yourself.” But there were no half-way decent pumpkins under 20 pounds. We brought plastic grocery bags to help the children carry the pumpkins, but plastic grocery bags aren’t strong enough for 20-pound pumpkins we could barely get to fit inside a bag. All the bags were torn to shreds right off the bat. Time for an exercise in problem-solving. How do these little kindergarteners get their huge pumpkins that half mile, up-hill to the bus… I expected the children would realize the futility of their dream and let it shatter there in that muddy field… not!

We rounded up my little group of eight kindergarteners (with three adults) and started off for the bus. The other two adults had the one pumpkin and five children with them. I lingered with the last three children, the ones with a pumpkin each. David decided he could kick his pumpkin up to the bus by pretending it was a soccer ball. He was wearing cowboy boots. I suggested pushing it with the side of his boot. Dylynn rolled hers, and Jordan was more worried about keeping hers warm… It was mighty slow going, and we lost sight of the rest of our group in 30 seconds. I suggested that perhaps we should leave the pumpkins behind as a gesture of good will for some other children (8 more busses arrived while we were there), expecting that they had had enough of the pushing-rolling-kicking. They wouldn’t hear of it. I pushed David’s for a ways, then rolled Dylynn’s a while to give her a break. I picked up Jordan’s and carried it (to keep it warm, of course). At this rate we could get to the bus in an hour. So, I carried one pumpkin 15 yards and left it with its owner while I went back for the next pumpkin and child, then went back for the last pumpkin and child. Then we did another 15 yards the same way and kept on going until we finally made it to the bus. We were exhausted, frozen, dirty, and so glad to get back to school, just in time for lunch. We expected that nap-time would be a welcome treat; only 2 fell asleep.

The ordeal took its toll, however. Three children from our class alone succumbed to “field trip fatigue” and had to go home after lunch. One of them was Dylynn. The sad thing is, after all her work for her pumpkin, she left it at the school and when she went to take it home the next day, it was gone. I guess we should have expected that.