It's almost Halloween!

... which, of course, means pumpkins!

So, on a beautiful fall day in the Willamette Valley, I joined a group of ten other seniors from Newberg Friends Church on an outing to Champoeg Park and Dave Brown's "Mustard Seed Farm" (where a host of pumpkins were on display). The one to the left has a small white tag on top that indicates that it weighed-in at 380 lbs.! Dave indicated that there is a big market in the Northwest for oversized pumpkins; hence, the farm grows them in quantity. (The ones pictured at the top are over 100 lbs.)

Arnie Mitchell led the tour today, taking us first to the Champoeg State Park Visitors' Center and a tour of the "kitchen garden" out behind that produces the same variety of vegetables that would have been grown locally in the 1860's by the early settlers in Oregon.
For example, the pole beans in the picture to the right were trained-up on a "teepee" made of three long sticks, with supporting strings stretched from top to bottom.

All in all it was a very interesting day -- especially to hear again the story of the mammoth flood that wiped-out the "city" of Champoeg, right on the banks of the Willamette River, in the fall of 1861. One highlight of the day was the lunch which Arnie and Barb Mitchell provided for the group at the Feller House B&B that they operate not far from Champoeg Park. Feller House was originally built in 1865 and has been added-to and extensively remodeled since then (picture below). - rw