Blast had at Grandpa’s Fun Farm

• Pumpkin

Kari Lucin/Daily Globe Kasey Gerhard, 5, and McKenzie Gerhard, 2, the children of Tami and Jason Gerhard of Worthington, choose their pumpkins Saturday at Grandpa’s Fun Farm.

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WORTHINGTON — As temperatures soared into the 80s Saturday, parents seeking good old-fashioned fun on the farm for the kids headed to Grandpa’s Fun Farm, where families could play games, navigate a corn maze, launch pumpkins with a trebuchet and meet friendly goats and calves.

“Turkeys,” said Elliot Beman, 2, of Sioux Falls, S.D., when asked what her favorite part of the Fun Farm was. There may have been a bit of confusion on her part as to exactly what the turkeys were, though.

“She kept calling them chickens,” said Brenda Oberloh, Elliot’s aunt.

Brenda visited the Fun Farm with her husband, Josh Oberloh, their son, Jonas, 9 months, and friends Jonah and Jessica Beckermann, who brought their children Elianna, 3, and Abigail, 1.

Business at Grandpa’s Fun Farm has been booming since its Harvest Festival began a few weeks ago, with nearly 300 people visiting the farmsome weekends.

“It’s been very good the last couple weekends,” said Marlyn Nystrom, the official Grandpa of the Fun Farm.

Nystrom added the pumpkin harvest has also been very good this year, though it came a bit earlier than usual.

Visitors can get a lot more than pumpkins at Grandpa’s Fun Farm. They can also purchase squash, gourds, ornamental corn, annuals and perennials and even trees. But the real purpose of the Fun Farm is just that — fun.

Despite the wide variety of options at the farm, including hay bowling, pumpkin painting, rides, mazes and miniature golf, the farm animals seemed to attract the most children Saturday, as friendly goats and a sweet-tempered calf nibbled feed corn and apples from careful young hands.

“Do goats eat apples?” wondered Terrie Nissen of Spencer, Iowa, who visited the Fun Farm with her daughter, Kendra, 9, and son, Zack, 5.

“Yes. There’s a goat eating an apple over there!” Kendra answered, preparing to offer her apple to one of the little goats.

“It’s been a good year — one of our best,” said Jolene Nystrom, Marlyn’s wife, who offered children prizes for winning games at the Fun Farm Saturday.

Though the Fun Farm draws many visitors from Worthington, it also gets quite a few visitors from Luverne and Adrian, and even more visitors from Iowa, who want to get away from home without spending a whole day driving.

There are so many options for entertainment at the Fun Farm, even the hardest-to-please child is sure to find something interesting, whether it’s the spitting llama cutout, the corn maze, the apple throwers or the hay maze.

During the week, most of the visitors come in groups for school field trips, church group outings, girl scout or boy scout troops and birthday parties. On weekends, families and groups of families show up together.

Grandpa’s Fun Farm is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 12:30 to 5 p.m. Sunday through the last weekend of October. The farm is located about five miles south of Worthington on Nobles County 5, also known as Read Avenue.

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