It’s not quite official yet, but the fall season is in the air.
With the days getting shorter, some venues are starting to prepare for autumn festivities. A popular Kelowna spot, McMillan Farms, has already gotten a start on some of those preparations.
Owner Ron McMillan said they will be busy for the next two weeks preparing the farm in time for their Sept. 25 opening.
“We’ve got lots of different things we’ve got to get ready before we open up,” he said.
“We gotta start picking our pumpkins out of the fields, set up our maze area, get our tractor and hayride loading area set up; we’ll have some food trucks here again, lots of displays to put out.”
The last few years have been challenging for the farm, McMillan said, with restrictions on how many people they can accommodate and ever-changing weather patterns, but they’re hoping this season will be better in terms of restrictions.
“We’ve had some weird weather events over the last few years. We had snow last October, which has never ever happened in our history here, the year before we had some cold weather in September which affected some of the other crops as well,” he said.
He added that while the heatwave has been difficult, it certainly helped their sunflowers bloom, albeit a bit too early, as they are usually in bloom when the farm opens in September.
The pandemic restrictions by the province have also brought in some confusion at the farm, but at the end of the day, McMillan said they want to keep visitors and their staff safe.
“Hopefully, we can all make this work. We want to have people come out and enjoy the farm. It’s a great outdoor thing to do considering all the things that are going on,” he said.
“But let’s all follow the rules, work with us and other businesses so we can all stay open and busy.
“The farm has become such a big part of the community and we’re flattered and honoured to have that kind of role for a lot of people, so we really look forward to seeing a lot of familiar faces again and we welcome lots of new people too.”
To book your timeslot to visit the farm, visit McMillan Farms’ website.
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