Business Really Growing at Pumpkin Patch
Their first year, the uninitiated arrive on this field woefully ill-equipped: barehanded, wearing shorts and sandals, without even a bag or a bucket to carry out the goods.
The second year, they wise up: leather gloves, jeans, sturdy shoes, a wagon perhaps.
By year three ingenuity kicks in: Bring on the wheelbarrow. Tether a plastic garbage can to a dolly. Load up the double baby stroller. Heck, roll out a city-issued trash barrel. There are dozens of ways for a clever suburbanite to harvest and haul vine-ripened pumpkins from an honest-to-goodness patch.
In the annual quest for that must-have October commodity, a jack-o’-lantern, up to 20,000 people will converge on 40 acres of Cal Poly Pomona farmland in what has become the university’s single most popular event, the two-day Pumpkin Festival. It continues today, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
As the popularity of Halloween celebrations has grown, a pumpkin on the porch has become almost as ubiquitous as the living room Christmas tree.
The pumpkin patch that started as a student project has exploded into a regional event that takes months to plan and brings in more than $13,000 for Cal Poly student clubs.
As part of its College of Agriculture, Cal Poly maintains more than 700 acres of land so that students can study farming, animal production, landscaping and irrigation.
For student farmers, the pumpkin field offers a high-pressure lesson in the ups and downs of agriculture. This year was tough, a battle against both economics and nature.
First, California’s power crisis meant they had to rent a generator to pump water to the vines. Then the aphids landed, resulting in a below-average yield.
For families with young children, it’s a lesson that pumpkins don’t come from Vons.
Many said this one autumn morning is what family traditions are made of.
“We keep coming back year after year,” said Dana Votendahl, a mother of three from Huntington Beach. “In times like these, we especially need traditions. It’s our security. It’s what keeps the family wholesome.”
Just after dawn Saturday, hundreds of families were pressing against the field’s gate, eager to be the first to traipse through the sprawling patch of sticky, fuzzy vines heavy with pumpkins--mud and grasshoppers included.
“We had to open the gate at 7, there were so many people wanting to get in,” said student farmer Chad Cleveland, who has lived on the farm for months. “And they just keep pouring in.”
By 9 a.m., Pomona police were directing traffic at key intersections and had yellow-taped the curb to prevent jaywalking.
By 10, the parking lot was jammed and SUVs were circling for spaces.
At 11, the Martinez and Lopez children were debating the qualities of a perfect pumpkin.
“It has to be big and have a stem,” said 5-year-old Christian Martinez.
“It can’t be deformed and the color has to be straight-up orange,” said Matthew Lopez, 12.
The crowds scooped up pumpkins as if they were gold nuggets on vines, piling five, six, 12 gourds or more in their barrels. One mom carried her baby and strapped pumpkins in the stroller.
Visitors were buying anything with leaves on it.
Hundreds of tall, dried-up corn stalks were selling briskly for 50 cents each, an autumnal decorator’s dream.
“I’ve never had these before,” said Janet Spanos, 53, of Valinda. “I’m going to take a bunch of these cornstalks, put a scarecrow next to them and have a serviceable Halloween-to-Thanksgiving display.”
Another woman was yanking live vines out of the earth to take home.
“I like something more than the standard jack-o’-lantern,” said Patricia Galvan, 36, of Walnut, who had a bucket of odd-shaped pumpkins (vines included) and gourds in her bucket.
Then there was the field stopper--and it wasn’t the rise of the Great Pumpkin.
“Wow! What a wagon!” one passerby shouted to a beaming Richard Bagley, 51, of Yorba Linda.
Bagley, a four-year pumpkin patch veteran and professional cabinet maker, had custom-built a wagon just for this event. It’s big enough to carry 30 pumpkins, with varnished plywood panels that fold down for easy car travel and a hand-carved, solid oak handle.
“The first year we came, we didn’t even have a wagon,” Bagley said. “But now, we have this.”
The festival has become an annual field trip for him and his neighbors along Via Mariposa. Next year he promises to add bigger wheels, higher sides and brakes.
As hundreds stand in line to pay only $3 a pumpkin, student farmer Cleveland revealed a secret: Not all the pumpkins were actually grown at Cal Poly.
There’s simply not enough acreage on campus to meet the demand.
Before the public arrives, the students spike the field with cleaned-up, out-of-town pumpkins.
But this is all fine for visitors like Spanos. It was her first year. She didn’t bring shears.
