One of San Diego’s best kept secrets, Oma’s Pumpkin Patch is a working family dairy farm which throws open its doors every October to throngs of big-city San Diegans looking for a little piece of down-home fun. Scarred by concrete jungle “pumpkin patches” filled with inflatable jumpers and located in mall parking lots, our family found Oma’s a couple of years ago and it has quickly become a tradition. Oma’s is a place to play like kids played long ago . . . the old fashioned way. Climb on a tractor, slide down a cottonseed hill, jump off a hay bale, throw a football to your dad in a big grassy field . . . at Oma’s you can do all of this and more. Hayrides run every 20 minutes and include a tour of the milking facility and a short talk about the cows. They average about one cow born per day, and on this trip we missed that day’s birth by just one ride. We got to see the mama cow licking the baby and helping it to stand up for the first time.
