Pumpkins away -- Paul Brooks fires off the pumpkin cannon at Brooks Farms in Mount Albert.

Looking for something new in pre-Halloween fun for your kids or grandkids?

Try taking them to the weekend pig races, and a zillion other things, at Brooks pumpkin farm at Mount Albert, a few kilometres east of Newmarket and about 60 km north of Toronto. It's one of the highest spots in southern Ontario, atop the Oak Ridges moraine.

Here they have teams of energetic young pigs that love to run. There's a circular pig track about the size of a suburban backyard, a miniature starting gate like the ones at Woodbine, a pig stable and corn treats for the pigs at the end of each race.

On Saturdays and Sundays from now until Halloween, races are run every hour, starting at 12 noon.

Pigs get to rest between races while a hammy pot-bellied pig named Roxie entertains the crowd until the half-hour strikes from a bell tower.

Then it's time to fire off the pumpkin cannons.

Paul Brooks and his gun crew ram wadding and pumpkins the size of cannon balls into three big black pipes aimed at targets a quarter-mile away. Paul pulls a compressed-air valve. With a horrific boom, pumpkins fly like space ships to shatter into a thousand pieces in the target field.

One cannon, called the Pumpkinator, is a pumpkin six-gun. Like an old-fashioned revolver, it has six barrels that rotate for rapid fire. By next year, Paul Brooks hopes to have a pumpkin machine-gun ready to spray the landscape with shattered pumpkins. They make excellent fertilizer.

Add to this a pumpkin train with a realistic old-time locomotive mounted on a 1944 Massey tractor, zip-line rides, a corn maze to get lost in, a straw-bale pyramid with tunnels, the xylophone bridge, an animal pen with rabbits, a donkey, turkeys, ducks, climbing goats waiting to be fed, friendly chickens wandering free and you have some idea why kids, parents and grandparents love the place and pay $7 a person for admission. That includes GST and entry to everything.

The only extra charges are for food, and oh yes, pumpkins. Nearly everybody wants to buy a pumpkin to take home. You pay $1 for regular size and up to $10 for giants -- a few of them up to 100 pounds.

Alvin Brooks, his wife, Brenda, son Paul and Paul's wife, Lisa, have had almost as much fun creating the pumpkin farm as the kids who flock there every October weekend. School classes come by the busload on weekdays.

It started about eight years ago when the Brooks family decided they needed extra income from their century-old farm if Paul was to make a career of farming. To their regular corn and soy crops they added veggies, raspberries, strawberries and agri-entertainment. That's the pumpkin farm.

Paul and his dad both have mechanical skills.They have built all the pumpkin farm features and add new ones every year.

For information about the farm, call 905-473-3920.

FARM'S FALL EVENTS SURE TO PLEASE THE WHOLE FAMILY

MOUNT ALBERT

To get there, go north on Hwy. 404 about 30 km from 401 to the Mulock-Vivian Rd. Go east (right) on Vivian Rd. for 9.4 km to Hwy. 48. Turn left (north) up 48 for 5.9 km to Mount Albert Rd. Go right (east) here for 2.6 km to Zephyr Rd. The farm is on the left just past Zephyr Rd.