Fall Festivals
Posted October 7, 2014 by Gemma Doyle
New England is known for being a bit quirky in its weather, and one of the things that really gave me pause about moving to Boston from Vancouver was the cold and snowy winters. To be fair, Boston is relatively cold and there usually are some spectacular snowstorms, but it’s not quite on the level of the Prairies or American Mid-West in either of those categories. (Which is a good thing! I know there are people who love the cold and think skiboarding and shoesnowing are great fun, but luckily you can usually spot them coming a mile away and steer clear of them before their delusions can get you.)
The thing that outweighed the cold and pushed me to come here anyway was the promise of amazing autumns. We don’t really get autumn on the West coast – not like here, with the vibrant foliage and pumpkin patches and fall festivals popping up everywhere. Autumn in Vancouver means dropping temperatures, more rain and fierce wind storms, none of which are as fun or picturesque as a corn maze or pick-your-own apple orchard.
In other words: fall in New England is awesome. I have spent a lot of October weekends of the past few years visiting various farms within an hour of Boston and doing the whole bit: hay rides, apple picking, corn mazes, pig races, etc. It’s not all traditional farmy stuff, either: there are farms that have paintball in the corn mazes and pumpkin cannons that shoot pumpkins 100 feet to splatter on broken down cars and trucks. So seriously something for everyone. 
I still hate winter, and by the end of November am usually grumpy with dread, but the autumn does make up for it. At this time of year it’s easy for me to say that the autumn more than makes up for it; if you ask me in January you might get a rather different answer. I know that lots of places in the world are lovely at this time of year, and I really hope that once I finish my degree and get my professional job I’ll end up in one of them. If anyone knows a place that’s lovely in fall and has no snow ever, please, please tell me what it is. That is perfection.