Demarest Farms - Hillsdale, NJ

* This post was originally posted on our main blog on 10/19/2008*

The temperature is getting cooler, the leaves are slowly changing it's colors...yup, fall is finally here! Only 13 more days to Halloween! It's time to take a drive up north to the countryside to pick out our Halloween pumpkin. After some research on pumpkin farms in the Northern NJ area, we decided on Demarest Farms in Hillsdale, NJ.

It's a relatively large, with a huge main farmhouse that sells all kinds of produce fresh from the farm. It's just the tail end of the apple season and there were all kinds of different apples for sale. They also had home made apple cider (mmmm, really yummy), candy apples, chocolate coated apples, apple pies, apple cinnamon donuts, apple jams...just about anything apple you can think of! Here is Kevin with some of the apples from the orchard nearby.

To get into the Halloween mood, they had an outdoor section of Halloween decorations as well as a 'scary' corn maze for kids and grown ups who thinks that they are still kids :P

We bought our tickets ($5 per person) for the hayride that will take us to the pumpkin patch from the main farmhouse. I think we got lucky, cos there wasn't a line for the hayride. From reviews online, it seems the wait for your turn can sometimes take as long as 45mins! The hayride took us along country roads, passing various apples and raspberry orchards. I enjoyed that ride tremendously, taking in the beauty of the fall colors and cool breeze in our faces. At last we arrived at a clearing and there were hundreds of pumpkins all over the place! This marks the beginning of the search of our perfect Halloween pumpkin :D

There were just so many to choose from!! After going thru what seems like millions of pumpkins, we found the one that we liked the best. It cost $6 per pumpkin, regardless of size or weight. Here is our perfect pumpkin, do you like it?? Now we have to lug it back on the hayride to the main farmhouse (trust me, its really heavy)

No la, not that one! It's so big I wouldn't even know how to carry it up to our apt! Our perfect pumpkin is below :D

After we got back to the farmhouse, we bought some cheeseburgers, potato pancakes, apple cider and root beer for lunch. They were all freshly made at the farm. What a wonderful lunch, everything seems to much nicer out in the country. Even the root beer taste so much better, eat yer heart out Mr A&W! Below are some of the stuff we bought from the farm.

1. Our perfect pumpkin



2. A basketful of golden delicious apples



3. Home made apple cider



4. Home made sodas ( root beer, diet creme, black cherry & birch beer)

Overall, it was a good experience for me as first time pumpkin picker. We had a great time away from the smoggy city and I can't wait for Christmas, that's when we shall return to pick our Christmas tree!!

Demarest Farms - Hillsdale, NJ
244 Wierimus Rd
Hillsdale, NJ 07642
Tel: (201) 666-0472
Web: http://www.demarestfarms.com/