We did our very first Halloween hayride in 1988.
We sent a wagon with 20 people on it every half hour and the ticket price was five dollars. The first year I believe there were around 13 people in the woods doing various things to scare and entertain the passengers.   After 35 years, the show had grown to sending a wagon with 30 people on it every five minutes, And the volunteer cast in the woods had grown to around 100 people.

One year just before the show we got a cease and desist order because some incredibly imaginative person or company had “copyrighted” the amazingly brilliant and unique term of “Haunted Hayrides”.  We ignored the cease-and-desist order because we had always called ours Halloween hay rides,  And to try to avoid this problem in the future we started spelling Halloween with three e’s. (Halloweeen).

The show had become wildly popular and tickets would sell out well in advance. 
The complexity of the show demanded  untold hours of preparation to build the sets, make sure that eight tractors and wagons were ready to go with qualified drivers, staff were organized, make up was purchased and ready to be installed, food for staff and the public was organized,  and the parking lot was set up and parking crew was ready,  (Thank you Lions Club for your many years of help parking).

We had to make sure that Chains were removed from the chain saws,  The flying witch cable was adjusted properly, bungee spider ropes were replaced,  generators were serviced and running properly, sound systems were operating correctly and the staff was trained in the operation and timing of their various gigs. 

It seems that everybody is afraid of something so we tried to have an assortment of scares including chainsaws, spiders, snakes, flying witches, huge fiery pumpkins, lit up eyes in the woods to follow the wagons, ghosts, falling signs, headless horseman,  runaway cars,  scarecrows with Children of the corn,  Insane Asylums,  surgeons that used chainsaws,  and for one year only “Divorce Connecticut Style that involved a wood chipper and then cooked pasta being thrown at the wagon in the dark, the infamous “Glowing Lady”,  and who could have thought that Clowns could be so scary? 

The show was wonderful but by the time it was over we were all completely exhausted.
It did generate a good amount of money for us and there were several years when if we did not put on the Halloween hayrides we quite possibly might have gone out of business.

Huge thanks to everyone who came to have fun and work so hard at making the Halloween hayrides the success that they were.

2020 came along and the powers that be told us we could not put 30 people on a wagon and send them out to the woods.  (Perhaps if we fed them snack pretzels of peanuts on the ride, like in airplanes,  it wound have been OK.)

Julie came up with the idea of doing a Haunted Walk Through the petting zoo, aimed at a younger clientele.   We would need to limit the number of tickets per hour to create a 4 to 6 foot distance that would keep the visitors safe.

This is year number three of the walk-through and feedback from the last two years has been very positive. For us the expenditure of energy that was required for the hayrides is much less for the walk-through so the end of the season we are far less exhausted.

People often ask if we are going to bring back the Halloween hay rides.  We have no definite plans at this point but it would be possible if we could partner with a group that could perhaps provide and organize the show in the woods and we could provide the infrastructure including tractors and wagons to produce the show.

We have been incredibly blessed that the farm economy has been such that we have been able to get by without the Halloweeen Hayride income. 

Great big thank you to everyone for supporting us in the past and if you’re interested in the walk-through please get your tickets sooner than later because they are selling fast and they probably will sell out.