Story and photos by Brett Wittenberg

Lying face down in the mud, snorting and rooting, were a bunch of stinking, lethargic and—if you asked kids visiting Drumlin Farm on Harvest Weekend—endlessly fascinating creatures.

Like changing leaves and cooler temperatures, Harvest Weekend has become an annual reminder that autumn is in full swing in Lincoln. On Oct. 19 and 20,  more than 3,000 visitors came from near and far to take part in the agricultural fun.

At the pig pen, Jen Sundstrom’s three kids took turns weighing themselves on a scale that told you, if you happened to be a pig, whether you’d be a piglet; a “finishing” pig, ready for market, a sow or a boar (see photos below). They climbed a stepstool to observe the real thing inside a wood-sided pen.

“The kids are loving the pigs,” said the Medford mom, covering her smile and her nose with her white turtleneck (her children didn’t seem to notice the odor).

The farm animals were a clear favorite with the younger visitors. Others explored the crop fields, went on hay rides, and picked their own fresh potatoes, squash and tomatoes to take home. Volunteers and staff circulated among the goat house, the horse barn, the chicken coop and the raptor and reptile houses to teach visitors about the farm’s year-round inhabitants.

“What I like most is actually this—seeing the people hang out, enjoying the simple activities, going out to the pick-your-owns… enjoying our fields which most people don’t get out to, getting to see the crops that we’re growing, and being able to harvest some stuff themselves. That’s my favorite,” a Harvest Weekend staffer said.

Heading down the hill from the front gate, visitors caught sight of kids laughing and darting in and out of the canopy of a flapping rainbow-colored parachute, gluing googly eyes and pom-poms to miniature pumpkins, kicking pumpkin-colored rubber balls, and “milking” wooden cows.

After stopping by the refreshment stand for glasses of cold apple cider, cookies from Concord’s Verrill Farm and sugar-dusted cider donuts, kids crowded around enclosures housing chickens, goats, pigs, cows, owls, and hawks. Even house mice drew a crowd as they skittered around a box of leaves while a staffer described their diet and habitats.

Two-year-old Avery of Lexington, sporting a ponytail and silver puffy boots, said excitedly that the pigs were her favorite part of Harvest Weekend, though she also liked the chickens, who were “climbing up the houses,” she observed.

Drumlin Farm is an interactive classroom of zoological facts for its youngest patrons, but older visitors seemed just as enthralled. “I like the raptors, all the owls and hawks,” said 47-year-old Ed Krasinski, who traveled to Lincoln from Salem, N.H., with his eight-year-old daughter and his wife, who said she used to visit Drumlin Farm when she was a kid.

“We just came to bring the girls to see the animals,” said Julie Fuller, 65, who drove six hours from New Jersey to accompany her three granddaughters, a 5-year-old and two-year-old twins, on their outing.

Hal Baker manned a booth of brochures, pamphlets and energy-saving light bulbs for Next Step Living, a New England residential energy efficiency company.  Although he was on the job last Sunday, looking to sign up passers-by for home energy audits, he seemed to be enjoying himself as much as any visitor. His personal connection with Drumlin Farm spoke to its enduring appeal.

“I came here almost 50 years ago,” Baker recalled. “The first time I came here is when I was a little kid with my parents back in the early sixties.”

A young visitor tries to pull a pony cart.

Girls decorate miniature pumpkins at the arts and crafts table.

A girl “milks” a wooden cow.

A scale in the pig barn tells a young visitor she’s a piglet.

A boy gets a kick out of Harvest Weekend.