Weather Can’t Keep Pumpkins Down

The cool weather that robbed Ventura County of its summer also delayed the pumpkin harvest this fall. But the crop is as bountiful as ever, growers report, and local pumpkin patches are bustling.

“We fought all the fog this year,” said David McGrath, who owns a 12-acre patch visible from the Ventura Freeway near Victoria Street in Ventura. The weather set his harvest back at least two weeks. “We’re still harvesting squash and pumpkins,” he said.

McGrath is one of nine commercial pumpkin growers in the county who plant the Halloween favorite over a total of 104 acres. According to the county agricultural commissioner’s annual report, last year’s crop made up only a sliver of the county’s overall $852-million agricultural business.

But the popularity of the pumpkin patches is booming. During October tens of thousands of visitors, many from Los Angeles and other urban areas, come to the patches to roam the fields and pick out their own pumpkins.

“This is harder than picking out a Christmas tree,” said Connie Hyder of Ventura as she stood in McGrath’s field surrounded by pumpkins for almost as far as the eye could see. “I had two picked out, but I put them down, and now I can’t find them,” she said.

Most of the patches’ offerings range from tiny pumpkins for less than $1 up to the Big Max variety that can weigh more than 200 pounds and cost $25 to $30. Some patches even provide wheelbarrows.

Most offer other diversions too--hayrides, a look at genuine farm animals. But no one provides the pumpkin extravaganza served up by Ayers Pumpkin Patch, Briggs and Telegraph roads, Santa Paula.

In operation 18 years, the patch draws about 40,000 people a year who not only haul away pumpkins but listen to live music, buy custom-painted pumpkins, eat pumpkin pie, enter the scarecrow making contest and view the farm from hay wagons drawn by Clydesdales or from Model T’s.

Tierra Rejada Ranch’s pumpkin patch, 3370 Moorpark Road, Moorpark, has more of a festival feel to it this year. Visitors will find live entertainment, arts and crafts face painting, pony rides--even pumpkin ice cream.