🎃 Picking pumpkins | Outdoorsy Newsletter

In today’s edition:

☀️ Your weekend weather outlook: Clear skies, light winds and temps in the 70s, perfect for outdoorsy activities. Here’s the (Phillies-friendly) forecast.

— Paola Pérez (outdoorsy@inquirer.com)

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Life is gourd.

This is especially true when autumn brings crisp sweater weather, apple picking, and beautiful pumpkins straight off the vine.

In the Philly area — we’re talking Berks, Bucks, Burlington, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Hunterdon, Lancaster, Mercer, and Montgomery counties — we have plenty of farms to choose from, many of which offer fun for the whole family. Here’s a preview:

🎃 Bountiful Acres Garden Center (Holicong, Pa.) hosts their Pumpkin Harvest Festival every weekend in October where you can pick your favorite pumpkin, try the two-acre corn maze, ride a miniature railroad, and even bowl with gourds.

🎃 Styer Orchard (Langhorne, Pa.) won’t charge you for admission or to take a hayride; you only pay for what you pick. There’s also ice cream, pies and doughnuts to enjoy.

🎃 Wilcox Farms (Boyertown, Pa.) has hayrides on deck and offers pumpkins at the market, plus plenty fall decorations to take home. They also have a huge 25-acre corn maze (think of it like a trail!) and there’s another just for kids to try.

Follow the pumpkin patch road and explore our list of 20 spots near Philly for the best of fall fun.

You won’t want to miss this, leaf peepers. Designer Charmaine Runes has a cool interactive story that shows us when and where you can expect to see peak colors of the season across the Keystone State, county-by-county.

The color-coded map indicates when the leaves are:

🟢 not yet changed

🟡 starting to change

🟠 near peak

🔴 at peak

🟤 starting to fade

Check the map for the latest update. And look out for next week’s forecast, right here in Outdoorsy.

🎤 Now we’re passing the microphone to Jason Nark. You’ll always find his work here. Here’s one I wanted to share with you from December.

If there’s a hierarchy of things you don’t want to burn, on purpose, most people would assume used rubber tires are close to the top.

That’s why environmental groups and locals in Carbon County are pushing back against a digital mining company’s plan to help power its cryptocurrency operation by burning a mixture of shredded tires, known as tire-derived fuel (TDF). In an application to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the Panther Creek Electric Generating Facility, 85 miles north of Philadelphia in Nesquehoning, said it hoped to use “chipped and processed” tires to provide up to 15% of its fuel.

At a recent public meeting in Carbon County, the DEP heard from locals opposed to Panther Creek’s plan.

“We’re sick and tired of being the dumping ground of polluting companies, which would not be acceptable in other wealthier communities,” said a township resident according to WFMZ-TV out of Allentown.

The Pennsylvania Clean Air Council said Pennsylvania’s DEP has cited Panther Creek for unpermitted air pollution seven times since 2021. Russell Zerbo, an advocate with the Clean Air Council, said Panther Creek’s application cites federal emissions studies that are decades old. — Jason Nark (Dec. 2023)

In March, the environmental group Save Carbon County sued Stronghold Digital Mining, the company that acquired the Panther Creek Plant in 2021, according to Jenny Roberts in a report for Grid Magazine. As of August, the company did not have a permit to burn tires, but residents reportedly still complained about the smell of rubber in their communities.

Keep reading to learn about the approximately 292 million “end-of-life tires” produced in the United States every year — most of which are reportedly in New Jersey — and the push against pollution for power.

I can always count on a walk along the beach to ground me. This recent sunset at Savannah Beach in Lewes, Del. was the antidote to anxiety.

Last week, we found peace and quiet together in some of the most serene places in our region, and I asked you to share where you go to escape city life. Here’s what Tom Pluck told me:

“The place I go to escape the noise is the Pine Barrens.

There are a few places close to home where I can hike or mountain bike, but still hear traffic in the distance. So on the weekends I make the drive out to Batsto, Atsion, Franklin Parker Preserve, Parvin Lake, or Maurice River Bluffs in the Pinelands. It’s a treasure that we saved from being paved into an airport in the ‘70s and it’s there for all of us to escape for walks, hikes, biking, kayaking, camping, picnics, swims… as soon as the pines are surrounding me on the county roads, I feel peace enter my body.”

🧘🏽 That’s what it’s all about.

📮 Give us a review of your outdoors experience for a chance to be featured in this newsletter. Email me back here.

“The leaves are changing; I feel poetry in the air.” — Laura Jaworski

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