The Fox Valley Park District’s Blackberry Farm is ready to welcome in the autumn season with its annual Pumpkin Weekends celebration starting Saturday.
The event will take place at the farm at 100 S. Barnes Road on Aurora’s far West Side from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays throughout October, as well as on Columbus Day on Monday, Oct. 13.
Facility manager Abby Oldenburg said the farm offers a one-stop-shop of entertainment during the fest, including special events each day during the celebration’s run.
“Admission is just $10 for every guest 1-year-old and above, and you have access to all the amenities that include our steam engine, hay wagon, carousel and ponies,” she said. “Our cost makes us much more competitive than the other festival or pumpkin patch things you’ll find. Some places, you pay for admission as well as a cost later on rides.”
Oldenberg said Blackberry Farm has been offering the annual Pumpkin Weekends event for about a decade.
She said “last year, we refreshed all of our names of our locations like our museum sites and so forth” for the festival.
“We leaned more into each Pumpkin Weekend’s theme, similar to what we do with our Holiday Express theme where we had each location named something holiday-related,” she said.
Guests at Pumpkin Weekends will find attractions like the Candy Corn Carousel which is decked out in candy corn decorations, Halloweentown in the Early Streets Museum and the Jack-O-Lantern Junction train depot.
The biggest day during Pumpkin Weekends, Oldenberg predicted, will probably be Oct. 18, when the trick-or-treat event is offered.
“Everyone will pay admission to get into the park, and then from there we will have about 10 different trick-or-treat stations throughout the park and we often see more than 3,000 people on a day like that,” she said.
In a press release from the park district, visitors are also advised “to be on the lookout for five golden pumpkins strategically placed throughout the park.”
“We hide these golden pumpkins about the size of a softball throughout the park and as you find them you mark them off on your map,” Oldenberg said. “You then take that and turn it in at our gift shop as you’re leaving with a chance to win four individual season passes for next season.”
Oldenberg said there “is a good mixture of hiding spots” noting that some “are in plain site with others that are more challenging.”
“We hide about eight of them even though you only have to find five,” she said. “We have those folks that are determined to find all eight of them but we do a good job of hiding them for younger and older kids and adults. It does become kind of a family scavenger hunt.”
For more information on Pumpkin Weekends, call Blackberry Farm at 630-892-1550 or go to www.foxvalleyparkdistrict.org or the Blackberry Farm Facebook page.
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.