POSTCARDS : HOW DOES YOUR PUMPKIN GROW?Byline: Ana Young Daily News Staff Writer It's round, rippled, yellow-orange and tasty. It's also oodles of fun - the only fruit you carve into a face before you even think of eating it. And 400 to 500 tons of them are harvested each autumn at Santa Paula's Faulkner Farm Pumpkin Patch. Grab a wheelbarrow and head for the fields. Seven public acres offer every size from a 2-inch-wide mini to a 200-pound Big Max. ``The prize winners are the very big pumpkins,'' said special events coordinator Diana Borchard. These are the true jack-o'-lanterns. The largest pumpkin on record here, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. farm co-owner Lin Ayers, weighed about 253 pounds. Pumpkin patches abound in or near the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. . But the Faulkner Farm in Ventura County is its own attraction. Hayrides and rides in a model-T (bought new by the present owner's grandfather) are available most days through October. Country bands play some days. The Barn Shop sells crafts, jams, jellies, deliciously sweet Faulkner Farm applesauce, pumpkin bread Pumpkin Bread is a type of moist quick bread made with pumpkins that is relatively involved to make, due to the fact that pumpkin must be cooked and softened before being used to make the bread. Frequent add-ins include nuts or raisins. and other items. Farm Demonstration Day, scheduled for Oct. 26, includes quilting quilting, form of needlework, almost always created by women, most of them anonymous, in which two layers of fabric on either side of an interlining (batting) are sewn together, usually with a pattern of back or running (quilting) stitches that hold the layers , whittling Whittling is the art of carving shapes out of raw wood with a knife. Whittling is typically performed with a light, small-bladed knife, usually a pocket knife. Specialised whittling knives are available as well. , horseshoeing, goat milking and weaving. Mary Baxtor of Pasadena doesn't mind driving the extra miles to the Santa Paula Santa Paula (săn`tə pôl`ə), city (1990 pop. 25,062), Ventura co., S Calif., on the Santa Clara River in a fertile valley that yields citrus fruits, avocados, vegetables, flowers, nursery products, and walnuts; laid out 1875, inc. farm. ``It's got more of a special feeling to it. It's a fun outing,'' she said. Holly Hawkins of Glendale summed up the whole experience: ``Pumpkins and just the day at the farm.'' We sat on haystacks Haystacks can be:
traditional dish, especially at Thanksgiving. [Am. Culture: Flexner, 68] See : America bought from a stand, taking in this 27-acre wonder with the pumpkin fields set colorfully against the bright red of the imposing Eastern-style barns. Lemon groves line the perimeter; other wholesale crops are peaches, apricots, apples and oranges. In the animal pens, a pig sunned itself, turkeys gobbled, a rabbit dozed. Behind the barns, a frisky frisk·y adj. frisk·i·er, frisk·i·est Energetic, lively, and playful: a frisky kitten. frisk 5-month-old colt named Max was trying - in vain, it seemed - to nurse from his mom. The pumpkin fields are planted in June; the vine appears shortly afterward, surrounded by leaves and tendrils Tendrils is an irregular collaboration between noted Australian guitarists, Joel Silbersher and Charlie Owen (musician). A difficult sound to describe, Tendrils features two seemingly chaotic but strangely melodic and complementary, guitar parts and occasionally stripped back . Then comes a droopy-petaled yellow flower that withers withers the region over the backline where the neck joins the thorax and where the dorsal margins of the scapulae lie just below the skin. fistulous withers see fistulous withers. as the yellow baby pumpkin swells to an orange adult. Four months pass from seed to vine to flower to pumpkin. ``It demystifies farming when people come out here, and it's fun at the same time,'' said Marisue Eastlake, farm spokeswoman. She gets a chuckle or two from visitors' questions. ``Someone asked, `Can you make pumpkin pie with the pumpkins grown here?' '' Yep, and not just the garden-variety kind. From Lin Ayers' ``Pumpkin Patch Recipes,'' $3.95 in the Barn Shop, you'll get a pumpkin-pie recipe from 1886. Or how about pumpkin pudding, ice cream, cheesecake, bean stew, soup or jam? If squash is more to your liking, you can choose among white pumpkins, Queensland Blue, Blue Hubbard, banana squash, butternut butternut: see walnut. butternut Deciduous nut-producing tree (Juglans cinerea) of the walnut family, native to eastern North America. A mature tree has gray, deeply furrowed bark. , turban (named for its turbanlike shape), sweet dumplings and gourds shaped like objects ranging from a bottle to an octopus. George Faulkner, great-grandfather of Lin's husband, Allan Ayers, bought 160 acres, subdivided from the Rancho Santa Paula y Saticoy land grant, in a sheriff's sale sheriff's sale n. an auction sale of property held by the sheriff pursuant to a writ (court order) of execution (to seize and sell the property) to satisfy (pay) a judgment, after notice to the public. (See: levy, execution, writ, forced sale) in the 1870s. ``Sometimes when I farm, I find bits of pottery'' left from early ranching days, said Ayers, who, along with his wife, teaches junior high in addition to farming. Apricots, wheat and hogs supported the first generation of farmers on the land. Pottery may not be all that's buried there. There's a legend about a worker who ``buried all his money in the corner of the pigpen. When he came back, they had ripped the pigpen out, so (the money) is supposed to still be there. Every time I plow the ground, I look. Of course, it's paper money, but if it were gold ...'' The two barns were built 100 years apart. The double-slanted-roof big barn, topped with a tiny square cupola, was built in the 1880s. Budweiser built the small barn in 1982 to shoot a commercial and left it for the Ayers family, who bought the property that year. At pumpkin time, Pie-on-the-Porch offers pie, cake or tart, plus coffee or iced tea, to adults only on the semicircular semicircular shaped like a half-circle. semicircular canals the passages in the inner ear, in the bony labyrinth concerned with the sense of balance, especially the detection of movement. porch of the majestic gray and white 1894 Queen Anne Victorian house. We retreated from the kids, the squawking animals and even the earthy clip-clopping of the horses' hooves. The peaceful atmosphere told us we weren't at a theme park. As Eastlake said, ``We'd like to keep it a farm atmosphere. This will never be Disneyland - or Disneyland Jr.'' Headin' straight for the farm ... The Faulkner Farm is at 14292 W. Telegraph Road, Santa Paula. From the Ventura Freeway (101) east or Interstate 5 north, take Highway 126 to the Briggs Road exit. Admission and parking on the grounds are free. (You pay $2 to park at Briggs School across the road.) Pumpkins and Christmas trees are the farm's specialty crops. The Harvest Festival continues 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily through Oct. 30. Pumpkins cost from 65 cents to $40. Food and beverages, in addition to pumpkin pie and ``Pie-on-the-Porch,'' are sold on the grounds. The Christmas Forest, next to the Pumpkin Patch, is open Nov. 29-Dec. 22 and offers trees and ornaments for sale (saws, gloves and tree carts are provided), plus train rides on a narrow-gauge railroad, hayrides and model-T rides, along with carolers, craft fair and contests. Information: (805) 525-9293. CAPTION(S): Photo, Box Photo: The barns are nearly as famous as the pumpkinsat the Faulkner Farm Pumpkin Patch, where the larger structure is more than 100 years old. Box: Headin' straight for the farm...(See text) |
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