Their best trip ever

Tony Hurtado, or “Farmer Tony,” is the man in charge of the Rainbow Disposal Ranch. Working since mid-June growing pumpkins on a plot of land across the way from Oak View Elementary School, he waited and worked all summer to get his patch ready to share with the kids.

The wait ended Monday.

One class at a time, all grade levels at Oak View in Huntington Beach walked down to the farm, which also grows corn and reclaimed trees that had been found abandoned in other locations.

During a walk through the patch, kids got a four-part lesson on the growth stages of the grand gourd, which can trace its origin back to Central America.

On a fold-out table near the entrance of the Rainbow Disposal Ranch, a pumpkin cut in half displayed the seeds.

Seeds are where the pumpkin comes from, Hurtado told Donna Glavinic’s kindergarten class.

Plant the seeds in the dirt and a tiny vine comes out of the ground, Hurtado continued as one of his assistants demonstrated how to plant a seed in the ground.

“I like the little ones,” said 5-year-old Jaqueline Martinez. “They look like little baby pumpkins, and the big ones look like big mamas.”

Along a path built through the patch, classes stopped at a second location to study the vines and the flowers that eventually become pumpkins.

Some of the children in Teresa Ascencio’s kindergarten class noticed that not all the pumpkins were orange like they see at the store.

“They can come in green or white, dark orange or light orange,” Hurtado said.

Hurtado and his crew had a few surprises planned for the children to help keep things festive.

A hut — built from corn husks where a man sat and another man dressed as a scarecrow — sat along the path classes took through the patch.

“Is this the best field trip we’ve ever had?” Glavinic asked her class.

“Yes,” the group yelled in unison.

At the fifth and final stop of the outing, every child and some accompanying parents picked a pumpkin from a large pile with pumpkins in all sizes and shapes. The children smiled for a group photo and then headed back to class.

Hugging their pumpkins, or balancing them on heads, the children walked single-file back to the school, just across the street.

Once the children returned from their excursion to the pumpkin patch, they worked on coloring sheets provided by Rainbow that help teach about the growth of pumpkins.

“This fulfills the kindergarten state science requirement,” Bonnie Bruce of Rainbow said.