It’s a crisp fall day on the farm, the sky is big and blue, red and yellow leaves tremble and fall and all around you are round fat orange pumpkins. Now add gourmet locally-grown food, pumpkin picking and a spooky Halloween festival. That’s a fun day in the country – let’s break it down.
Fill your tummy with food grown here
It’s called Sturgeon County Bounty and it’s on at Prairie Gardens on Saturday, Sep 28 from 11 am–3 pm. The Barr winery will be there with their two yummy fruit wines, Cajun Angus in Bon Accord will cook up their smokies with red chili jelly and mozza and Morinville’s new Bistro Di Madre Piccola will bring you pumpkin soup and truffle mac and cheese with boar bacon. Holy moley – are you lucky.
Plus, Chelsea’s Pub from Bon Accord, an info booth for Morinville Farmer’s Market and tickets for the Sturgeon Valley Wine and Food Fest, Oct 5 in St Albert. You’ll also find local artists with their paintings and handcrafted jewelry.
Food tickets are $1 each and most of the items cost between three and six tickets.
Run, play and scream at the Haunted Pumpkin Fest
This weekend, Prairie Gardens also celebrates their Haunted Pumpkin Fest grand opening too. This month-long festival of spookiness runs all the way to the end of October – scaring the pants off kids just like it has for over 50 years.
The haunted house is open and three corn mazes too (although the big one is really big and more like four in one itself). You can watch a magician, balloon artist and a live band. Make a scarecrow and take a wagon ride. And check out the blacksmith making cool metal things using fire and a big hammer – and there’ll be knightly games for brave knights, in case you know any of those.
The pumpkin cannon will start shooting this weekend too with all proceeds going to the Youth Empowerment & Support Services. You take a big misshapen pumpkin and shoot it out of an air cannon so it flies through the air and splats into a thousand pieces on a big old pirate ship in the field. Yeah – it’s as fun as it sounds.
Haunted Pumpkin Fest runs every weekend in October at Prairie Gardens.
