We ventured out to a pumpkin patch today with a friend!
Since it's a very American thing to do, and not super typical for Italians, I figured a lot of fellow Americans would be interested in what the Napoletanos offer for fall activities! The pumpkin patch opened this week, so we had the first time slot available at 9am on a Saturday. It took us about 30 minutes of mostly-highway driving to get to the town of Pignataro Maggiore from Naval Support Site Naples. Google maps had the marker right for the patch, but the entrance for the parking was a little further down the road, across from a PAM Supermercato.
After parking on the hay-covered lot, we got paper bracelets that showed which activity we were doing, painting or carving a pumpkin. A great field of pumpkins lay before us, and each child was given a tiny, adorable red wagon to cart around their chosen pumpkins. This was baby E's favorite part, to the point where he was in tears when we had to park it to paint our pumpkins.
There were a lot of cute, curated photo ops for the kids and for families! Along the side of the pumpkin field was a row of porch seating, too.
Once we got our pumpkins, the venue staff directed us towards the areas for painting and carving the pumpkins. We followed a fenced path that wound around fields of evenly spaced white pumpkins, framing a large white building that resembled a regal, rural American home. As set out on the website while purchasing tickets, the pavilions for the painting and carving were labeled and along the path. Ours was first around the path, and we sat down at our table to paint our pumpkins.
After making a solid mess, and doing our best to distract baby E from that darling little wagon they had us park near our painting pavilion, we placed our painted pumpkins back in the wagon and followed the path past the other pavilions to the Pumpkin café, where we sampled the following: a pumpkin spice latte (fine, a lot of cinnamon at the bottom), "infuso" (tea, essentially), some pumpkin bread (tasted good but would have benefitted from being served warm), a donut (pretty good!) and the boys had the Halloween biscotti (jack o'lantern shaped pumpkin cookies with backs dipped in chocolate). There were juice boxes available for the kids in an orange/carrot combo and peach.
We snacked perched by the café bar, but we could have walked a little further and sat more comfortably in the main eating area where they had some food stands with what they called "street food," things like pizza, gnocchi, and gelato. Past the seating area and street food section was more space for the kids to run around, a corn maze featuring Spookly the Square Pumpkin, and a "family farm" with farm animals in viewable pens. We weren't sure if the animals were safe to pet, so we avoided doing so, but among them were very tame looking donkeys, rabbits, tiny goats, Shetland ponies, geese, chickens, and sheep.
The corn maze was cute, a little long for us, but I tried to read the Spookly story posted along the way, since it was in Italian and English. Many of the attendants at the patch and farm area spoke enough English to direct visitors to anything they needed.
The best restroom option was the one near the cafe, and included a changing table; otherwise, there are port-a-potties in a few spots, but they seem clean and have handwashing options inside.
Tickets for entry (that count per pumpkin) can be purchased online; you have choose to do painting or carving, and if you have a small child that wants their own pumpkin, make sure you purchase a ticket for them, because the attendants were really watching and counting the pumpkins moving in and out of the patch. 👀
Overall, it was a really cute and fun couple of hours checking out the Italian interpretation of a pretty typically American fall activity.
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