Owner Rob Arenth with a Cinderella pumpkin, stands in the doorway of the pumpkin house. Photo by Anne Laughlin It’s truly picturesque in the Lower Snoqualmie Valley this time of year. There are plenty of opportunities for photos at Fall City Farm located just north of Fall City off Highway 203. Families wheel children out to the pumpkin patches and come back with wheel barrows filled with perfect pumpkin specimens, children alongside. They stop along the way to catch it on video or to snap a photo. And, back at the market area, they take out their cameras again to get photos of kids in the pumpkin house or sitting on bales of hay holding pumpkins that will soon adorn porches throughout neighborhoods in advance of Halloween.

Children and parents step inside the pumpkin house and peer out of between shelves of gourds. Some purchase one of the truly unique specimens from the pumpkin wall. There are at least 12 varieties of pumpkins, gourds and squash on display. Owners Rob and Wendy Arenth suggest carving relief faces on Cinderella pumpkins or using them for baking. Everything but the core is solid pumpkin so little goes to waste.

A bountiful harvest of pie pumpkins, cheerful symbols of fall harvest and the necessary ingredient for a truly homemade pumpkin pie! Photo by Anne Laughlin The Toucans, a steel drum band that has played the Folklife Festival for 20 years, entertains the crowd between blasts of the pumpkin cannon, something Rob is eager to demonstrate.

The market sells fresh produce from the farm and chanterelles and garlic grown locally. Most families took home a few extra items from the farm such as frozen jugs of fresh apple cider, jars of raspberry honey (drawing its flavor from bees that frequent raspberry bushes), and honey sticks. Vegetables include potatoes, beets, tomatoes, winter squash, lettuce and leeks. Some of the produce comes from Oxbow Farm, a sign that farmers in the Lower Valley embrace the idea of networking, being part of a greater community. Cindy Krepky, owner of Dog Mountain Farm in Carnation, was also there to help out at the registers.

Steel drum band, The Toucans, performed for the crowd. Photo by Anne Laughlin Particularly given the strong harvest and the exceptionally warm and sun-filled day, one would never guess the challenges these farmers faced last winter and spring. “We started slow, planting in mud,” recalled Wendy. “There were windows of warmth and sun and we planted until the end of June. Then it was really cool and dry. No rain for 6 weeks.”

Like the other farms we visited, Fall City Farm had a bountiful fall harvest with some of the nicest pumpkins around. And people from all over Puget Sound were there.

“Our mailing list used to be 60 percent Seattle,” explained Rob. “And now it includes all of the eastside.”

The farm gives school tours during the week, sharing how a real farm works, giving children the chance to work side by side with the growers.

A trip to Fall City Farm - as with all the farms we toured - is worth tracking down the owners for a conversation about the farm. The Arenths are laid back, friendly locals who enjoy watching families run through the hay maze, picnic on the lawn or come back from the pumpkin patches exhausted and happy. The joy is written on their faces. The owners and staff are there to help you pick out a pumpkin or talk with you about what makes farming the best job in town.

According to the Arenths, the weekend was not quite as busy as last year’s fall harvest opener. Rob estimated that lower turnout was in part due to a more robust Salmon Days Festival in nearby Issaquah (some 150,000 people from the region came out for the festival). Showery weather didn’t help, either. But he anticipates a good season ahead and says with a wide grin that next weekend, weather permitting, will be “wall to wall ridiculous.”

Open every day but Monday, the Arenths will be busy now until early November and then it will be time to think about their Christmas tree season. For more information visit www.fallcityfarms.com.