Land of the Great Gourd : Pumpkins: The crop is ripening early and Ventura farmers are scrambling to protect their fruit. With Halloween a month away, timing is everything.

Six men rode slowly through a field Wednesday, hiding pumpkins.

They were working against the sun, covering mounds of harvested pumpkins with cornstalks balanced to form gold-green tepees. If left exposed, the pumpkins could rot.

With Halloween a month away, pumpkins across Ventura County are ready for harvest. A little too ready, in some cases. The summer’s warm weather has caused some to mature too quickly.

“If you’re in the inland areas, you’d better have some cover over them, because they will burn,” said J. Link Leavens, whose family farms about 50 acres of pumpkins around Santa Paula and Ventura.

Farmers hide the pumpkins under their own thick, leafy vines. Or they use corn stalks for shelter as a month of intensive harvesting begins.

Ventura County’s pumpkin crop--worth just $422,000 last year--is small compared to the multimillion-dollar avocado and citrus harvests. But during October, the bright orange gourd becomes the mainstay of roadside produce stands, drawing Los Angeles shoppers who prowl the countryside in search of the perfect jack-o-lantern.

Before the end of October, most of the county’s approximately 145 acres of pumpkins will be harvested and sold.

“It’s all Halloween-related,” Leavens said. “Pumpkins are not worth very much on the first of November.”

This year, the gourds matured early throughout California, egged on by steady sunshine and multiple heat waves. Typically planted in mid-June, the pumpkin crop is often not harvested until mid-October.

David McGrath, who runs the McGrath Farms produce stand in Ventura with his wife, Beth, said the hot weather and the problems it brought forced him to cut some pumpkins from the vine before they had fully ripened to their bright orange hue, McGrath said.

“You’d rather have them vine-ripened, but if you don’t cut with the problems coming on, you’re going to lose the pumpkins anyway,” he said.

Last year’s weather posed its own problems for growers. The high number of foggy days kept some pumpkins from maturing on time, Leavens said.

Like most pumpkin farmers, McGrath grows many varieties of the gourd, and some have thrived this year. Workers are already bringing in truckloads of pumpkins from his fields in east Ventura, lining up gourds the size of beach balls next to his shuttered produce stand.

Outside Santa Paula, the Faulkner Farm Pumpkin Patch creates an entire seasonal business around pumpkins, letting shoppers wander through the fields to find the right one, as well as offering hay rides and farm demonstrations.

Come November, pumpkin season will end. McGrath said the pumpkins he can’t sell will go to livestock producers for feed or to charities for food. “I’m happy to give it to them if they can use it.”