Fall Pumpkin Picking in Joisey

Back in the day, we grew up believing that apples, pumpkins, all our veggies and even our milk all came from the corner store. We’d heard of places called “farms” where suspendered hayseeds coaxed our food stuffs out of the ground, or –yech- out of the under parts of large mammals. Now a-days city kids get much closer to the origins of our food at our local greenmarkets. Here farmer Joe comes to life and smiles at us as we buy our corn-fed eggs (who knew they had teeth!), but the actual farming life is still just as real as Green Acres reruns on TV Land.

If this description rings true to you, get thee and thyne to Johnson’s Corner Farm in Medford, NJ.  It’s down the NJ Turnpike to Exit 5, just about as far as Philly.  The farm is one of the best day trip experiences in the region, a virtual county fair of rural fun. First, line up to get your tickets for the hayride and pumpkin picking. The tractors pull visitors out into the pumpkin patch where your little darlings can roam the corn-maze and choose the biggest pumpkins poor Daddy will have to carry. This year my heirs managed to find giant specimen that overloaded the digital scale back at the cashier station, nearly “squashing” the tiny little cashier who had to lug it to the oversized scale. The verdict: a 50 pounder / about $25 dollars worth of pumpkins, plus a smattering of odd gourds in various shapes and colors that should never be found in nature.

Back at the market, Johnson’s has the pumpkins and gourds pre-picked for those who’d rather skip the hayride. The also have racks and racks of fresh pies – pumpkin, apple, and pecan, in addition to peach berry as well as strawberry apple tarts, blue berry muffins, apple cider donuts, and an lightly-sweet apple crumble bread that explodes over its tin. A festival atmosphere prevails with live music – country, rock, bluegrass; delicious BBQ pork sandwiches; and fresh ice cream from Bassett’s of Philly. A Johnson’s specialty is the brain freeze – apple cider slushy over their own soft serve ice cream.

My kids love the animal pen where you can feed dry corn to the farm critters and play in a home-made obstacle course. By mid-day the animals are stuffed, except I did find one hungry goat who couldn’t help sneezing whenever you’d reach out your hand to feed him off your cob. Remember kids, use the sinks outside the pen and scrub those hands good. Johnson’s has also opened an area for the 2-8 crowd called Discovery Barnyard with more critters and things to climb on. And don’t miss the gift shop, which this time of year carries all kinds of fun Halloween craft items.

On recommendation from the locals, we stopped off at Tarantella Restaurant, a nearby Italian restaurant, deceptively located in the Medford Plaza Center strip mall at Hartford Avenue and Route 70. An encouraging sign was that I could hear the staff speaking to each other in Italian from the kitchen. The friendly staff was welcoming and offered good recommendations. The northern Italian menu has a creative menu that includes lobster manicotti, jumbo shrimp scampi, tortellini Alfredo, and a seasonal pumpkin ravioli, all in the richest sauces imaginable. Desserts include the usual suspects of pound-packing cheesecakes, cannolis, pies, and more. Check out the fruit sorbets served in natural bowls of hallowed-out pineapples, mangos, lemons, and so forth. We were all well stuffed when we left, taking a crate-load of leftovers home with us to eat the next day.

Tags:   apples, halloween, medford, new jersey, october, pie, pumpkin

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Posted on 10/13/2008 ( Permanent Link )
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