Join us this holiday season at Griffins Christmas Tree Farm! VonThun Farms offers fresh, hand-made Christmas wreaths, grave blankets, cemetery crosses, candy canes, door swags, pine roping, and more.

SHOW THIS BLOG POST TO SAVE 10% ON YOUR VONTHUN FARMS CHRISTMAS DECORATION PURCHASE…VIEW OUR DETAILS BELOW! 
Griffins has been New Jersey’s premier Christmas tree grower for generations. They have acres & acres of fresh Christmas trees…offering Balled, Cut-Your-Own & Pre-Cut trees.

All our Christmas decorations are hand made. Custom wreath decorating is available on weekends from 10-4….we’ve got lots of ribbon & decoration options to choose from! 

Griffins Christmas Tree Farm is only minutes from VonThun Farms…Griffins is located at 190 Fresh Ponds Road, South Brunswick.  (To use your GPS, use Jamesburg (Monroe), NJ 08831). Griffins is open daily, 9 am to 4:30 pm.

SAVE 10% ON YOUR VONTHUN FARMS CHRISTMAS DECORATION PURCHASE OVER $25. THIS BLOG POST MUST BE PRESENTED TO RECEIVE DISCOUNT. DISCOUNT VALID ON WEEKENDS ONLY THROUGH DECEMBER 16, 2012.

Print this coupon to save on your fresh balled, cut, or pre-cut Christmas tree from Griffins!

Fall is a special time of year. It is a time of transition from warm weather to cool, t-shirts to sweatshirts, & from fresh berries to locally grown apples. On the farm, fall is time for corn stalks, straw bales, mums, & jack-o-lanterns. At VonThun Farms, once our Fall Harvest Weekends begin, it becomes time for families, fellowship, & fun.

The VonThun farmers, as well as staff, spent the summer of 2012 planning, reorganizing, & restructuring the activities & attractions VonThun Farms has become so well known for. They took a look back at what previous fall seasons held, and looked ahead at what the fall of 2012 could be. Part of that planning, reorganizing, & restructuring focused on farm and activity changes, upgrades, and our new one price fall admission.

Our one price admission was designed to let our guests stay longer, play harder, spend less, & make more memories together as a family. And we believe it does just that. Looking back at previous fall seasons, the staff too vividly remembered lost children & misplaced parents on the farm. Parents often sent their young children into the corn maze alone while they vowed to sit “right here” and wait for the children to return. There were countless times that parents put their children alone on a hayride to the pumpkin patch to find that perfect pumpkin, while they stayed back and waited their childs return.  Parents got frustrated when the children took longer to return than they were supposed to. Children often got scared when they returned to the “right here” spot their parents were supposed to be and their parents weren’t there. What should have been families, fellowship, & fun often became frustration, frantic calls, & family fights… all because parents tried to save a little by letting the kids go off alone into the maze or to the pumpkin patch, because they were considered old enough to do those things alone. For the past 5 years, the corn maze price was $8 and the tickets needed to go on a hayride cost $3 …oddly enough, the same price as our new once price admission. 

While planning, reorganizing, & restructuring, we thoroughly considered our one price admission. We considered having options for parents or others who may not have planned to participate in the farms activities. But the thought of families, fellowship, & fun kept coming back to us. To the staff at VonThun Farms, that’s what fall on the farm is all about. So rather than construct a dozen different price options, we decided to make some changes, upgrades, & additions to what we had to offer. We added activities & attractions for younger kids, older kids, and adults …and decided on what we felt was a fair one price admission. 

While you might not plan to play & take part in the activities we offer…you will. While you may feel that $10.95 per person is a bit much to pay for the farms admission, be rest assured that it provides a savings over purchasing the tickets that we offered for the past many years. With our one price admission, you have unlimited access to all 18 of our activities all day. (Pony rides, face painting, corn cannons, & pumpkin blaster require an additional fee). You may not plan to take part in our fall activities, but we know that you do plan to spend quality family time and make some memories this fall season. If you haven’t thought about quality family time & memories…we’re sure your kids have. What kid doesn’t like having fun while doing things hand-in-hand with mom & dad?!

Our one price admission…it was truly designed to allow our guests to stay longer, play harder, spend less, & make more memories together as a family!!

(Our coupons are featured in our September 26th blog post)

Our 24th annual Fall Festival is just days away…and we’re getting EXCITED!! The activities we offer are the same each weekend throughout our fall season, but the entertainment we offer on our Fall Festival weekend is fantastic!! Our one price admission for our Fall Festival weekend is $13.95 per person…a few dollars more than other weekends, but well worth all the added entertainment!!

Live country music by The Nashville Attitude will set the tone for a weekend that promises to be fun for all!  This premier band from Staten Island has played at our Fall Festival for over 10 years! 

Puppet shows will run continuously throughout each day…compliments of  JMT Productions. The educational shows highlight such themes as recycling, ecology, and respecting others.  Our young guests are mesmerized by the puppets who keep our adult guests grinning from ear to ear!

Bonky G Bird is the resident clown at VonThun Farms Fall Festivals! Bonky has been providing smiles & laughter for our guests for well over 6 years. You can find Bonky under one of our entertainment tents…singing, story telling, & doing magic for kids of all ages!

Chris, our 9′ tall juggler/stilt walker is another of our favorite Fall Festival entertainers! Chris never fails to amaze everyone with his talent & charm. You can’t miss Chris when you’re at the farm…he’s the TALL guy!

This year’s special guest will be Sponge Bobb…he’ll join us from 10 – 5 both Saturday & Sunday.

Airheads Entertainment is exclusive to the VonThun Farms Fall Festival! There’s not much that Jason can’t make out of his twisted balloons (although we still haven’t seen him make a goat!!)…but he keeps it simple for our guests. Balloon animals are free for the asking…but if you plan to ask, be prepared to stand in line – Jason makes each animal by hand and they’re slow going!

And…magic by Bryan Neuber is sure to keep you on your toes! Brian performs walk around magic for our guests…he’s INCREDIBLE… so be sure to find him while your at the farm for your visit!

Our new one price activity area admission lets our guests stay longer, play harder, spend less, & make more memories together as a family. It appears that this new concept has caused some confusion. Here at VonThun Farms, we are committed to providing the best experience possible for our guests. For years, we sold activity tickets for each of our activities. If you wanted to go through the corn maze, you bought tickets to do so. if you wanted to take a hayride, you bought tickets to do so…and those tickets added up in price if you wanted to do all, or many of our activities. (A sheet of 12 tickets was $11…and each activity required 3 or 4 tickets. Do the math – that $11 ticket sheet allowed you to do only 3-4 activities). With our new one price admission of only $10.95 (+ tax), guests now have UNLIMITED access to all 18 of our activities & all 5 of our attractions, isn’t that a much better deal??! (Pony Rides, Face Painting, Corn Cannons & our new Pumpkin Blaster require an additional fee). **PLEASE NOTE: Admission for our 24th Annual Fall Festival (to be held on October 6 & 7) is $13.95 per person (+ tax).

 We’ve added quite a few new activities this year too….Pumpkin Checkers, Pumpkin Bowling, Monster Mural Coloring, a Kiddie Corral, Lincoln Logs, Corn Hole, & a Trikes & Tractors Course. Although all our activities are perceived to be for kids…parents should consider their time at VonThun Farms an opportunity to become a kid-at-heart, and have fun with their kids. The Pedal Karts, Hippity Horses, Kiddie Corral, & Straw Maze are tons of fun…for kids of ALL ages!! And, we’ve seen just as many kids as adults enjoying our Pumpkin Checkers, Pumpkin Bowling, Monster Mural Coloring, & Corn Hole!!

When you visit VonThun Farms this fall season, we hope you will enjoy our new one price activity area admission! It was designed with our guests in mind…as it truly does allow you to stay longer, play harder, spend less, & make more memories together as a family!!

Save a little this fall when you visit VonThun Farms!
Print the coupons or show them to our cashier on your i-phone.

Our beautiful hardy fall, homegrown mums can be planted around the yard or left in their pots for you to enjoy all season. Want to enjoy your mums next year too?? Once the mums have bloomed and are past their prime, plant them in the ground. When the tops die off, cut the stem so it is about an inch above the ground. Cover the stem & the roots that are underneath with mulch or fallen leaves to give the roots a little more warmth for the winter & more of a blanket of protection. There’s no guarantee, but your fall  mums may bloom again next spring!

Our one price activity area admission lets you stay longer, play harder, spend less, & make more memories together as a family! Activities are available on weekends only through October.

Would it be eating goodies from the Carlo’s Bake Shop?  
Or having the whole family together for an outing?
Hard to say … 

This is a slideshow of our farm animals through the years.  Some of these critters are still with us, and some have gone Over the Rainbow.  We hope you enjoy seeing these as much as we enjoy looking back through them ourselves, from time to time.
 

Who would think that a honey bee would work so hard, for so little!

Here at VonThun Farms, honey can’t get more local!!  BEEcause there aren’t enough honey bees to do the jobs that we need done (pollination!), we need to bring bees onto the farm. 

Stiles Apiaries and Mr. B’s Bees supply us with our busy little beavers that are responsible for pollinating all the crops we grow.  We also have an observation bee hive that we use to help educate the thousands of school kids that visit each year.  The local honey, supplied by both Stiles Apiaries and Mr. B is available in our Country Farm Market.

Here are some cool facts about honey bees (collected online):

• The honey bee has been around for millions of years.
• Honey bees have 6 legs, 2 compound eyes made up of thousands of tiny lenses (one on each side of the head), 3 simple eyes on the top of the head, 2 pairs of wings, a nectar pouch, and a stomach.
• Honey bees have 170 odorant receptors, compared with only 62 in fruit flies and 79 in mosquitoes. Their exceptional olfactory abilities include kin recognition signals, social communication within the hive, and odor recognition for finding food. Their sense of smell is so precise that it could differentiate hundreds of different floral varieties and tell whether a flower carried pollen or nectar from meters away.
• The honey bee’s wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200 beats per second, thus making their famous, distinctive buzz. A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.

• The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
• A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth to collect 1 kg of honey.
• It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee’s flight around the world.
• A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
• The bee’s brain is oval in shape and only about the size of a sesame seed, yet it has remarkable capacity to learn and remember things and is able to make complex calculations on distance travelled and foraging efficiency.
• A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees and one queen. Worker honey bees are female, live for about 6 weeks and do all the work.
• The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs per day. 
• Larger than the worker bees, the male honey bees (also called drones), have no stinger and do no work at all. All they do is mating.
• Each honey bee colony has a unique odor for members’ identification.
• Only worker bees sting, and only if they feel threatened and they die once they sting. Queens have a stinger, but they don’t leave the hive to help defend it.  It is estimated that 1100 honey bee stings are required to be fatal.
• Honey bees communicate with one another by “dancing”.
• During winter, honey bees feed on the honey they collected during the warmer months. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.

Now, WHY local honey you ask?
BEE’cause of all it’s health benefits, of course!!

Local honey…It’s healthier and more nutritious than you think!!

-- Good source of antioxidants: It plays a big role in the prevention of cancer as well as heart disease.

-- Honey is a treat, and is man’s oldest sweetener. It is an excellent substitute for sugar in our drinks and food. Honey is composed of sugars like glucose and fructose and minerals like magnesium, potassium, calcium, sodium chlorine, sulphur, iron and phosphate. Has a low calorie level: Another quality of honey is that, when it is compared with the same amount of sugar, it gives 40% less calories to the body. Although it gives great energy to the body, it does not add weight. Rapidly diffuses through the blood: When accompanied by mild water, honey diffuses into the bloodstream in 7 minutes. Its free sugar molecules make the brain function better since the brain is the largest consumer of sugar, thus, reduces fatigue.

– Honey contains vitamins B1, B2, C, B6, B5 and B3 all of which change according to the qualities of the nectar and pollen. Besides the above, copper, iodine, and zinc exist in it in small quantities. Several kinds of hormones are also present in it.

-- If you have a sore throat, take some honey. Honey has powerful antimicrobial properties, which can soothe your raw tissues. Pour a teaspoon of honey into a large serving spoon and then top off the spoon with lemon juice. Swallow the concoction (without water) every few hours until symptoms clear up. Some people add a pinch of black or red pepper to increase blood circulation to the throat.

-- Due to its natural anti-inflammatory effect, it will help to heal the wounds more quickly.It also has different phytochemicals–chemicals found in plants and different foods–that kill viruses, bacteria, and fungus making it a good substitute for wound dressings.

– Do you have a cut? Honey is a natural antiseptic.  By applying honey to your wounds, you prevent infections. Honey contains antimicrobial agents, which prevents infections by killing the bacteria in and around your wounds.  Many types of bacteria can’t survive in honey, so wounds heal, swelling eases, and tissue can grow back.

– Honey may also be effective in the treatment of your ulcers.In Europe, honey has been used internally to help cure ulcers, particularly stomach ulcers. Honey is easily digested: Because sugar molecules in honey can convert into other sugars (e.g. fructose to glucose), honey is easily digested by the most sensitive stomachs, despite its high acid content. It helps kidneys and intestines to function better.

– Burns, too, heal better with honey, studies show. The advantage of honey is that it not only prevents infections from occurring, it actually accelerates skin healing.

After a tough day at work, the bees come home to deliver their goods!

-- Honey is very effective in the treatment of some pathological conditions of the intestinal tract, the respiratory organs, the heart, and the nerves.

-- Supports blood formation: Honey provides an important part of the energy needed by the body for blood formation. In addition, it helps in cleansing the blood. It has some positive effects in regulating and facilitating blood circulation. It also functions as a protection against capillary problems and arteriosclerosis.

-- Did you know that honey can relieve you from the hangover? If you have drunk a lot and it is becoming difficult to get rid of the hangover by mixing two spoons of  honey  with half a cup of orange juice and half a cup yogurt. Blend them together properly and gulp it down.

-- A tablespoon of honey whisked together with an egg white, 1 teaspoon of glycerin and about 1/4 cup of flour makes an excellent firming mask. Just smooth on the face, leave on 15 minutes, and rinse off with warm water. You will be pleased with the results. Honey also makes a great moisturizing pack. Just mix 2 tablespoons of honey with 2 teaspoons of whole milk, smooth over the face and throat, or try mixing honey with lemon, whipped eggs, and yogurt and let it do its job for 15 minutes. Rinse off with warm water, and finish splashing with cold water.

– Honey also makes a great lotion for dry patches of skin on hands, elbows, or other parts. Just mix 1 teaspoon of honey with 1 teaspoon of olive oil and a 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice. Apply to hands, elbows, heels of your foot, etc., and wash off after 15 minutes. Fast relief!

– Honey works well on chapped lips and for acne bMix 1 tablespoon of honey with a cup of warm water. Use it as a mouthwash. Honey cleans teeth and dentures, and kills germs in the mouth.ecause it has antibacterial properties.

-- To give your hair lustrous shine, mix 1 teaspoon of honey into 4 cups of warm water. Use as a hair rinse. And if you’re a blond, add the juice of 1 lemon, too.

– You can also use local honey to help cure dog allergies. Why does it have it to be local honey? Apparently local honey contains very tiny amounts of pollen. These tiny amounts of pollen are not enough to trigger the allergic reaction in your dog when they ingest the local honey. What does happen though is each time the dog eats the local honey, the dog’s body begins to build up a tolerance to the pollen. Eventually, the dog is able to tolerate the amount of pollen usually present in the dog’s enviornment. It works the same way for humans. You can give your dog anywhere from a teaspoon to a tablespoon of local honey once or twice a day. You can also mix it into to their food. Make sure it is raw local honey.

This info is compliment of: http://www.bees-online.com/HealthBenefitsOfHoney.htm

Local honey VS. store bought honey

The nutrients or enzymes that raw honey does contain are destroyed by manufacturers who heat it in order to give it a clear appearance to enhance sales. It is healthier for you to buy ‘local honey’ and not the manufacturer processed honey you find on Supermarket shelves. Much of the honey on Supermarket shelves comes from overseas and you will not really know that fact. Keep in mind that store-bought honey is pastuerized and all of the beneficial bacteria has been “cooked” out of it.

A lot of recipes call for canned pumpkin, but…did you know that you can replace canned pumpkin for fresh pumpkin, even if a recipe calls for canned? Pumpkins are easy to handle and cook once you know how.  Here are some methods that we’ve found helpful. A lot of these are tips that have been passed on to us from friends and family.