Tales Of The Corn

Another epic day at the Pumpkin Patch is in the books.  It was a long one ... with more crazy happenings.

Right off the bat a lady lost her huge diamond ring.  With three inches of crushed almond hulls covering the property along with a good bit of sand, we expected her husband would be buying a new one.  It was the craziest thing ever when someone actually spotted a shiny thing and picked it up.  Even more miraculous, they turned it in!!  That person just got ten gold stars in Heaven.  The ring was returned to the very happy owner.

If it's even possible, there were more people yesterday than two days put together.  They came from as far away as Fresno in the south and almost to Stockton in the north.  You could barely walk around and the lines for attractions were just crazy.

Unfortunately, that also brings out the rotten apples to spoil our barrel of fun.  We spotted flying corn coming from the Corn Maze.  That means some rotten kids are trying to hit the hay ride that circles the maze.  The owner's two tall strapping boys know exactly how to catch them, but they weren't ejected soon enough.  One customer got hit in the head, which we immediately took care of.  Sadly, the Corn Maze was shut down for the night.  The rotten apples were kicked out.

This is the location of the Billykin Blasters.  See the tennis balls on the right of the picture above?  These blasters shoot those into the barn.  All those critters, including a miner and the sheriff, yell out when they get hit.  The chicken at the top of the barn squawks like crazy, the pig on the right squeals and the miner says "you got me".  

I was giving a break to the kids running it.  I must say it's pretty fun until we are out of tennis balls and have to shut down for five minutes to go collect them.  It's probably the hardest job on the property.

I can't tell you how many cell phones are lost ... maybe six or seven a day.  I'm sad to say that included mine!  Lucky for me, I just left it in the office when trying to find lunch tickets for the tractor drivers.  Oh I panicked big time trying to remember everywhere I had been, but retrieved it in record time.

Car keys are another big ticket item we are always looking for.  We found a Buick key fob in the corn maze while chasing the kids out, but never could locate the vehicle it belonged to.  At 7:30 I was on the hunt for another set of Jeep keys lost on the Hay Ride.  Those were never found and the Jeep remains in our parking lot.

I actually spent a good part of the day helping load the Time Travel Tractor with 100 people each time.  Getting that many people on and off is difficult for the 16 year old shy girl working the gate.  You need to work fast and furiously to keep the line moving.  In between those laps, I helped keep the slide moving.  I even surprised myself that I was still standing upright!!  

I'm pretty sure I will be famous on Facebook.  While training a new employee on the slide, I tried to nicely tell the lady she could not go down with her child on her lap.  That didn't go over well at all.  I then offered to measure the kid to see if indeed she was tall enough to ride.  We have a 38" minimum height criteria ... over that you can ride.  Under that, I'm sorry, but they are too small.  

She didn't even let me measure, just stomped off, coming back seconds later to get my name.  The good news is the Owners back me up.  There's always one, right?  And in this big of a crowd, usually eight or ten!!

One last panic mode ensued when the Gem Mining gal called to say she was out of bags.  I snagged every extra body I could to put rocks in the plastic bags, then fill them with sand.  We were barely able to keep up with the demand with two of us filling them constantly.  There's nothing like being bent over a big box of sand for a few hours!!

The best news ... I do actually seem to be getting stronger every day.  On other hand, I'm back to work this morning making more gem bags.  OH BOY!!

Total miles walked:   10.35

So far:    124.53   I'm cringing because I have 14 more days to go!!!!