It is October and fall is in the air!
Take the time to enjoy this beautiful season and make a trip to Shaw Farm in Milford, Ohio.
Shaw Farm has everything you need to immerse yourself in an autumnal sensory experience – crunch bright red and orange leaves beneath your feet, smell hot funnel cakes being dusted with powdered sugar, let sweet barn music fill your ears and sip some locally made apple cider.
Best of all, there are several free options. Admission and parking are free, but so are the interactive playgrounds, animal area and concerts in the barn.
Scenes in the playground are created with familiar characters posed as pumpkinheads! The creative lands allow your children to pretend to be princesses, pirates, cowboys, Native Americans, farmers, miners and more! Each scene has its own little wooden village that your kids will love to explore. My dudes loved running from area to area, squealing with delight at each land they discovered. I loved the great photo ops with my happy, smiling kids.
What would a farm visit be without meeting some new farm friends? The Fall Fest gives visitors the opportunity to greet cows, horses, chickens, a donkey, llama, and my kid’s favorite, some pigs! The pigs oinked and wagged their little tails happily, which my dudes loved.
The barn is filled with hay bale seats and a string band. It is a great place to sit down and relax for a minute and enjoy some great tunes.
You can purchase tickets for the following great Fall Festival add-ons as well: tractor and horse pulled hayrides, pedal karts, little blue train rides, face painting, and the famous Shaw Farm Giant Corn Maze.
We chose a horse-pulled hayride on our trip, and loved every minute of it! The path took us all around the farm which was decorated with friendly looking ghosts and goblins. Our driver was kind and informative, introducing us to his horses Lee and Duke.
My sons were a bit too young to ride the pedal karts on their own. However, since I planned on eating copious amounts of festival food later (hot dogs, fries, and funnel cake, oh my!), I willingly pushed them around the track. Each round of pedal karts lasts 10 minutes, so it is well worth the ticket price!
The little blue train ride is an absolute blast, also well worth the ticket price for the length and quality of the ride. The driver snaked around a path and did donuts in a large field. Mom tip: the caboose is the best seat! My older unknowingly got in the caboose, and as the driver did circles he would say “you’d better hurry up, I’m going to pass you up, slow poke!” We had a serious case of the belly laughs by the time we got out of the carts.
Face painting is a steal at a mere $2. My youngest son wants to be a ghost for Halloween, so he was quite excited when he saw there was ghost face painting option. The artist was wonderful and patient with my kids, and the artwork looked like what was offered on the display board (don’t you hate when you pay for one design to end up getting a smeared blob?!).
We did not brave the giant corn maze on this excursion to Shaw Farms, but the aerial view of it looks wonderful! The corn field is cut to have a tombstone and witch image, which can be navigated using GPS on your smartphone!
You can also purchase a patch’s worth of pumpkins, hordes of gourds, apples, ciders and homewares in the store. And if you worked up an appetite, there is a bounty of food up for sale including grilled hot dogs, burgers, fries, funnel cakes and more.
There is fun to be had for kids of ALL ages on any budget at Shaw Farm’s Fall Festival! Get out there and enjoy the warmth and family environment that the Shaw Family has been providing for generations!
Shaw Farm is located at
1737 OHIO 131
MILFORD, OH 45150
http://www.shawfarms.com/shaw-
https://www.facebook.com/
Amanda Ciani is a Mom Reporter, sharing her experiences on what’s happening this summer! Amanda lives in Northern Kentucky with her husband and their two terrific toddler sons. She graduated from NKU with degrees in Sociology and Philosophy. She enjoys writing haiku parenting poems for her blog (www.haikuciani.weebly.com) and Twitter account (@haikuciani).