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Happy First Day of October! I’m always so glad when summer gives way to the cooler, colorful joys of fall. Fall is my favorite season and I love that here in Tennessee it is a much more gradual and longer season than the quick flash of a few weeks that is in Utah. With October comes my insatiable desire to pull out my culinary skills for thick soup and bread, take a ridiculous amount of pictures of trees in the fall finery, and fill up my porch with pumpkins to the point that visitors have to find a path to the door.

Another favorite joy of this time of year is finding the local fall festivals that just seem to encourage my giddiness for fall. So on our way back from Kentucky we made a stop at Lucky Ladd’s Farm to enjoy the annual fall festival. This farm is huge and operates year long, but their fall festival is by far the local favorite.

At the front of the farm near the entrance they have a few huge fenced areas home to goats, sheep, cows, horses, and some llama. Kids can buy some food to feed to all the animals and they can pet their heads as the animals eagerly sniff their hands for something to nibble on. But Tessa decided to skip these areas and instead wanted in the area with the animals. She happily grabbed a brush and started brushing, petting, and tenderly speaking to each goat. And when she saw the massive white bunny bounding towards her she thought it was the greatest day of her life.

Even though they have tons of activities set up to play on, the real thrill is the giant red barn where you grab an old potato sack and speed happily down one of the slides. We did all the slides many times over before we decided to move on to something else. It’s always fun to see the adults on the slides matching the childlike joy of the slides.

We finally were able to convince Tessa to do something other than the slides. So we bounced around on the giant inflated area and were so happy when it was not just for kids. We played in a giant box of corn, rode the horse created from barrels and tires, walked their nature walk through the trees,and took a ride through the rest of the farm in a hay trailer pulled by a tractor. Tessa really wanted to ride in the small plastic cars pulled by the tractor and wanted us to join her. Everyone got a great laugh as we all watched Brad try to wiggle out of the little car.

With one more stop at the barn to rides the slides and then a soar through the air on the giant tire swing, we made our way to the pumpkins to find which ones would adorn our porch this season. Brad said that we only needed one pumpkin for each of us and without missing a beat Tessa turns to him and says that her and I will go get more without him. So glad to see that she shares my view of a porch covered in pumpkins! What a great way to bound into the beautiful season of fall.