Comment on Pumpkin patches, petting zoos, like Bass Family Farms near Mount Vernon, introduce city kids to rural life

  On any fall Saturday at Bass Family Farms, on Highway 30 between Cedar Rapids and Mount Vernon, you’ll find a host of people wandering about the property enjoying the crisp air. But they aren’t just visiting the farm to purchase pumpkins to take home and carve with their children. They are making a day of it. They go on a hayrack ride, check out the small petting zoo, play a round of mini golf, climb on oversized Adirondack chairs, and, yes, pick out pumpkins, which they wheel around the farm in little red wagons. Walking around the farm last fall while my kids launched tennis balls with a huge slingshot and bounced in the jungle-themed bounce house, I had to chuckle.