Review: Gallrein Farms (by Ash)

With Halloween creeping closer (hooray!) the time arrived for our annual family punkin' pickin' day. Every year my family loads up and travels the short drive to Shelbyville to Gallrein Farms to pick out our pumpkins and for some family fun.

This year we noticed a few changes, one that particularly hurt the score and broke my heart. The hayride to the pumpkin patch that is ALWAYS free is a thing of the past. It's always been free to ride to and from the pumpkin patch, then you just pay for your pumpkins by weight. So we show up with my husband, my mother, my sister, and my two brothers. Six people. And they are charging $2 per person to just go TO the pumpkin patch. My math sucks, but I'm pretty sure that's an extra $12 that we weren't planning on paying. The only salvation was the fact they had picked out some of the pumpkins and put them in a field within walking distance so you could go walk and pick UP your pumpkins. They weren't on the vines anymore so it's no longer punkin' pickin' but punkin' pickin' UP. When you put it that way it kind of loses it's charm and draw. I was so disappointed.


Nevertheless, they still had the hay pit, the hay castle, the bales of hay set up for kids to run and jump around on, and the big tunnel for the kiddos to play and run down some of their energy, all for free. Plus a free petting zoo (feed = $) and some paid activities, like a tractor ride, pony rides, bounce houses, and a corn maze. They have a market where you can buy smaller pumpkins and gourds, Indian corn, food/drink, gifts, and other goodies. There is also a tent set up selling food, but the prices are kinda high. Not, like, unreasonable, just higher than I'd like to pay for six people.

So we ended up walking to the small pumpkin patch and thankfully had a really easy time picking out our pumpkins this year. I guess it wasn't terrible that they changed things up, I like the selection. But I prefer the hayride and having to pick the pumpkins off the vines. It makes it more...involved. Personal. Like, "Pikachu, I choose YOU!!" (I totally need to get a fourth pumpkin named Pikachu now...)

So all in all, I give it 8/10 stars. We'll go back. We'll be more prepared, but we'll go back.

***Pictures of our pumpkins Chuck, Larry, and Zelda will be coming soon***