Don't head to the grocery store for your pumpkin just yet.
There's many a foodie shedding tears over this year's shortage of pumpkin pie filling. Fresh pumpkins haven't escaped the epidemic, either; some of the same overly wet conditions from last year that caused the current dearth of canned filling are wreaking havoc again this year, affecting the supply of jack-o'-lantern materials.
The piece de resistance: The pumpkin launcher, an enormous catapult exclusively for slinging and smashing pumpkins.
But fear not: There are still great big orange gourds to be had. For those of you urban dwellers for whom a sojourn to a farm for fresh pumpkins seems ideal but out of reach, don't head to the grocery store just yet. We've rounded up a few of the more popular pumpkin patches that are a hop-skip-jump away from the concrete jungle. The search for your very own Great Pumpkin can still go on.
Washington D.C.
Washingtonians always welcome a brief trip outside the city, especially for an activity as unpolitical and wholesome as picking pumpkins to decorate those Capitol Hill brownstones. Luckily there are several family-owned and -operated farms in the metro area that give those inside the Beltway the true fall outdoorsy experience of picking pumpkins, seeing farm animals and sipping cider.
Fall festivities on the farm include horse-drawn hayrides.
About 30 minutes outside the Beltway, in quaint Germantown, Md., is Butler's Orchard and Farm Market, a 300-acre produce farm and one of the more locally renowned places to pick your own pumpkin. Butler's Orchard has been hosting its Pumpkin Festival on Saturdays, Sundays and Columbus Day throughout October for 29 years, and it features every fall festivity imaginable, from pony rides and hayrides (evening ones are available) to a jump in the hayloft.
If you'd like your pumpkin trip to be a tad more eccentric, head on out toward the Blue Ridge Mountains to Bluemont, where you'll find Great Country Farms, home of the racing pigs. (Truly -- they run in the Oinkintucky Derby, this year themed on various reality shows and featuring "Paula Pig-dul," who weighs in at between 300 and 400 pounds). There's even a mechanical dinosaur that smashes pumpkins in its teeth. Bluemont Vineyard just across the street offers wine tasting, which you might need after witnessing the annual running of the swine and the feasting of the dinosaur.
