Pumpkin Pickers’ Paradise

For their annual pilgrimage to the perfect pumpkin patch, the Severin family got up extra early Saturday and drove three hours through choking weekend traffic.

Their trip ended in the same place it has for nearly 30 years: The Faulkner Farm Pumpkin Patch in Santa Paula.

‘It’s a family tradition,” said Paul Severin, a former Seabee at Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme who now lives in La Verne in eastern Los Angeles County.

Severin, who came to the farm’s 27th annual festival with his wife, Ara, and daughter, Tessa, relishes the escape from the city: “We get out, come here and roll around in the hay.”

Before the weekend ends, more than 4,000 people will have hauled 30,000 tons of pumpkins from the 27-acre farm off California 126.

And before the month ends, 2,500 schoolchildren will have toured the fields on class trips to learn about farming.

The festival runs from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. today, and the patch is open daily through Halloween.

The farm, though, is far more than a place to buy pumpkins, said Tom Schott, who planted the four types of holiday gourds that turned a brown dirt field into a sea of orange.

Nestled on the edge of urban sprawl, the farm gives visitors a glimpse of what rural life was like in Ventura County before so much of the area was paved over, Schott said.

“I’ve seen it all change from independent growers who own the land to the corporations,” said Schott, 34, who grew up farming with his father at several places in Ventura County.

In addition to pumpkins, Schott harvested 10 varieties of squash, as well as a thick field of sunflowers.

On Saturday, just across from the main cash register area, a country-and-western band played songs while visitors sampled fresh pumpkin pie and sweet-tasting, hot buttered popcorn at several food booths. A local food bank also set up a booth, and volunteers collected canned goods throughout the day.

Nearby, a tractor hauling a large cart stacked with hay was used for $2 rides around the farm. Ducks and goats sounded off in a small children’s petting zoo, and behind a metal fence, a blacksmith shaped hot steel into horseshoes as visitors snapped photographs.

“We’re trying to let people know that farming is alive and well in Ventura County,” said Schott’s wife, Karen, who helps her husband run the farm.

Food and music aside, the main draw this weekend was still pumpkins, rows and rows and rows of them.

Elena Warnock of Ventura made her first trip to the farm when her 26-year-old son was a baby.

This year, she came with her son and two grandchildren.

“I like it because it’s away from the concrete jungle,” Warnock said as she checked the ridges on a tiny pumpkin she had just picked. “It makes you feel like it’s fall even though it’s warm.”

For the Severins, the day was about continuing a family custom that began when their oldest daughter was an infant.

The children are now grown but Tessa, 22, was determined to pick pumpkins for her older sister, who lives in Palm Springs, and her twin brother, Michael, a student at Humboldt State University.

Tessa said she plans to drive to her brother’s place in Arcata next week to deliver his pumpkin.

“I don’t like supermarket pumpkins,” she said while loading an oblong pumpkin onto a wheelbarrow. “Plus, you can come here and have a good time.”

And lest anyone worry about leftover pumpkins: “On Nov. 1, pumpkins lose their value real fast,” Schott said, but “we feed the cows. They love them.”