Warning to parents: The following could be disturbing to children who, Linus-like, believe in the Great Pumpkin. Or at least the Great U-Pik-It Pumpkin Patch.
Look closely at those so-called pumpkin patches, those flashy roadside attractions with corn mazes, wagon rides and spooky decorations that parents and elementary school teachers herd children to each autumn. Chances are, the stems of those pumpkins are broken off and pointing defiantly upward. Nary a pumpkin is attached to its vine, right?
Some farmers will tell you that they clip their pumpkins off the vine as a service to customers, making it easier and safer for them to select and walk off with the perfect pumpkin.
Not necessarily so. Many of those alleged pumpkin patches are fields that are staged to catch a child’s eye. The pumpkins are trucked in, laid out artfully and there you have it: Curcubita pepo and its corpulent cousin, C. maxima, the equivalent of props on a Hollywood set, the better to lure pumpkin shoppers and make some bucks during the harvest season.
There is even a name for it: agri-tainment.
Not since 1948, when microfilm hidden in a hollowed-out pumpkin led to Alger Hiss’ indictment on espionage charges, has there been such a whiff of pumpkin intrigue. Plenty of roadside pumpkin patches are the real deal. And in some cases pumpkins are just trucked in when the home-grown supply runs low. But for many families, that authentic-pumpkin-picking experience is faux.
Grown elsewhere
Case in point: Hank’s Pumpkintown in Water Mill, N.Y., which attracts throngs of visitors each autumn.
On Montauk Highway, the main route through the South Fork of Long Island, Pumpkintown is the scene of frequent vehicular near-misses as cars packed with children veer suddenly off the asphalt when the patches of orange are spotted. Admission is $6 a child and $7 per adult just to pass through the gate.
Inside, there are wagon rides, hay bales to scramble over, a maze cut into the cornfield, pony rides–and wheelbarrows to fill with “pick-your-own” pumpkins. Activities cost extra, and pumpkins are sold by the pound.
But one recent Saturday morning, hours before the happy hordes descended on Pumpkintown, farm hands were spotted in the patch unloading pumpkins from a truck and carefully arranging them among the withered, well-stomped vines. Two more truckloads of pumpkins sat in a barn across the highway, ready when the patch needed replenishing.
Sorry, Linus. Most of the pumpkins “picked” at Pumpkintown don’t grow there. But the children on a quest for the perfect jack-o’-lantern have no idea they might as well be squeezing tomatoes in a grocery store.
“Hey, it was a lot easier for me when I just sat there on a tailgate and sold pumpkins out of the back of a truck,” said Lynne Kraszewski, who with her husband, Hank, owns Pumpkintown. “Now, we’re entertaining people for a whole day.”
She said their pumpkin patch was picked clean after just two weekends and confirmed that they have a secret stash of pumpkins that are grown elsewhere.
The Kraszewskis still also grow berries, corn, vegetables and flowers on their 400 acres, but potatoes used to be the family’s livelihood. When, in the early 1990s, market prices fell and the low-carb Atkins diet craze left potato sales languishing, the Kraszewskis hit on the idea of Pumpkintown. Their bank balance has looked better ever since.
Other farms do it too
Long Island is not the only area where the pumpkin patches are less than authentic. Barbara Gravesen confirmed that her husband, who operates Then Some Farms in Ridgefield, Conn., has bought more pumpkins from a supplier this season than in years past.
Diane Eggert, the executive director of the Farmers Direct Marketing Association, a statewide trade organization based in Syracuse, at first said that farmers only pad their patches when crop yield is low. When told that 12 out of 14 farmers interviewed in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey admitted to doing it, and not just this year, she abruptly switched course.
“Where consumer pressure is greater, the farms will run out, and they’re going to need to keep the customers coming,” Eggert said. “They are business people, and they do what they have to do.”
Yield does make a difference. Meredith and Jeremy Compton, who own Peaceful Valley Orchards in Pittstown, N.J., said they have a bumper crop and don’t need to fake it. Still, Meredith Compton, who is a consultant to Rutgers University’s cooperative extension and an adviser to many farmers, said she and a growing number of consumers are aware of the spreading incidence of sleight of pumpkin. She often receives e-mail messages from parents concerned with authenticity.
“They ask if the pumpkins are still attached to the vine,” she said. “I have to tell them that my husband cuts them because they’re impossible to get off by hand.”
High real estate prices and rising property taxes create a need to cut costs and generate new forms of revenue. Hence the increasing popularity of agri-tainment–or agricultural tourism, as it’s known in government circles.
Providing agri-tainment
Meredith Compton said customers wouldn’t come to her farm if she didn’t offer entertainment: a corn maze, hay rides, even pig roasts.
Wayne Outhouse said he’s saddened when someone calls his family’s century-old Outhouse Orchards, on Hardscrabble Road in Croton Falls, N.Y., agri-tainment.
But, he said, small farms need a shtick to compete with chain supermarkets–and developing nations.
“This is what we have to do to survive,” he said. “China is now the world’s largest grower of apples. They’re flooding the market with juice concentrate, and grocers do a better job at marketing, so why should anyone come here?”
But plant 15 acres in pumpkins, then truck in another 30 tons or 40 tons from bigger farms upstate, and you’re on to something. His 180-acre operation also offers pick-your-own apples.
And yes, it’s a real orchard.
