County Pumpkin Sales, Patches Blossom : Agriculture: The crop has grown so popular that it may become a special category in next year’s farm report.

The pumpkin patch business is bigger in Ventura County this Halloween season than ever before. So are the crowds they draw. And so, for that matter, are the pumpkins themselves.

Tens of thousands of visitors come from Los Angeles and other urban areas in October for the country fair atmosphere of the county’s pumpkin patches.

And they are heading back home with more and bigger pumpkins every year, including monster pumpkins such as Atlantic Giants and Big Max that weigh 200 pounds and more.

The rising demand for pumpkins of all sizes has made the county’s pumpkin crop an increasingly valuable agricultural commodity, Deputy Agriculture Commissioner Kenneth Weiss said.

In the past, pumpkins were such a minor part of the county’s overall $805-million agricultural business that they were just lumped into a miscellaneous grouping in the county’s annual crop report along with alfalfa sprouts, dandelions and leeks.

But annual sales are up to about $200,000 now and pumpkins have become so popular that they may be given their own special category in next year’s crop report, Weiss said.

“More and more people want to buy them and when there is more demand, the growers increase the supply,” Weiss said.

Although he could not be specific about the growth of the industry because of a lack of record-keeping, University of California farm adviser Robert Brendler credits Allan Ayers, a Santa Paula pumpkin grower, for much of the increases in sales.

“He’s been a leading figure in pumpkins,” Brendler said. “If

you go back 20 years, pumpkins didn’t amount to much in this county. It’s just kind of grown bigger and bigger as we got more people.”

The Ayers Pumpkin Patch at the historic Faulkner Farm draws an estimated 40,000 people each October, Ayers’ wife, Linda, said. About 12,000 of those are schoolchildren who come to tour the patch and ranch next door, she said.

The children and their parents buy pumpkins of all sizes, including a small 6-inch variety that comes prepackaged in a wooden crate marked with the Ayers name.

But the large pumpkins are always the first ones to go in early October, Allan Ayers said. He said he recently sold a 200-pound Big Max to a Bakersfield man for $25O.

“Everyone wants the biggest one on the block,” he said.

Allan Ayers, who teaches fourth grade in addition to growing pumpkins, is the great-grandson of the county’s pioneer Faulkner family. He said his pumpkins and the patch are successful because he and his family have perfected the trade over the years.

“We’ve grown Big Max for 20 years and my father did before that,” he said. “Anybody can grow pumpkins, but to grow them year after year, it takes a certain touch.”

Another of the county’s top pumpkin growers, David McGrath, also a member of a county pioneer farming family, said he has grown pumpkins on 10 acres along Valentine Road south of the Ventura Freeway for 12 years.

Several times a day, he jumps onto the single seat of his tractor to pull a hay wagon loaded down with kids and adults.

McGrath said he cannot estimate the number of people who come to his patch each year, but he offers a tour of the patch and a talk to schoolchildren every half an hour.

“We’re a mom-and-pop operation,” he said, taking a brief break in front of his Halloween display of gourds and squash, which he also grows and sells at the pumpkin patch.

It doesn’t provide big money but the business is certainly worthwhile, he said.

“It sure beats trying to play the vegetable market,” he said. “You sell to the broker and then the broker takes you to the cleaners. It’s a way we can go directly from the grower to the consumer.”

McGrath said his largest pumpkin this year was a 225-pounder that he sold for $35.

Both pumpkin growers, who are the two largest in the county, also wholesale their pumpkins. McGrath ships half his crop, about 50 tons, to retailers from Goleta to San Diego, he said.

Link Leavens is a partner with Ayers in the wholesale side of the pumpkin business. Leavens said the 300 tons of pumpkins they grew this year provided a “small profit” for his farming enterprise.

But this year’s crop was troubled with mildew and required five helicopter applications of sulfur, burning up a fair amount of rented helicopter time and profits.

“Pumpkins are no more or no less profitable than any other crop,” Leavens said.

There’s a human side to the pumpkin patch business, however, that makes it a special kind of farming for some growers.

In addition to the pumpkins they purchase, visitors to Ventura County’s pumpkin patches take home memories of horse-drawn hayrides and the knowledge that comes with a day in the country.

“Since only 2% of American people live on farms, a lot of these kids who come here have never seen a farm animal,” Linda Ayers said. “They are quite surprised to see that their Chicken McNugget comes with feathers and feet.”