Mike Williams, farmer and owner of Mill Tower Ranch, says never put your pumpkins on the pavement, because 'cement will suck the moisture right out of them.'
October is like the Super Bowl for pumpkin sellers, but how are farmers keeping up with fall harvest demands after a hot, dry summer?'We have pink, we have blue, we have black, we have red, we have brown, we have white,' said pumpkin farmer Mike Williams, naming the colours of his pumpkin harvest's yield. 'We've even got one that kind of looks like it's lace-covered.'
Just east of Ponoka, Alta., is where you'll find Williams' ranch. As a farmer, he said his pumpkin patch business came to be after growing them yearly for neighbours. But he says the beginning of this year's growing season was a "very, very dry one," having to run his irrigation system — which puts out 12,000 litres of water per hour — for six hours every week during the first two months of the season to keep the pumpkins alive.
Gietz has been farming pumpkins for the past 10 years, and she says Thanksgiving weekend is her busiest time of year. "Initially, I thought they weren't going to amount to much," she said, but September's perfect growing weather helped her patch get to the fall harvest finish line.October's pumpkin demand is high — Gietz says she sells out every single year — but even with the dry conditions through the growing season, she's ready for Thanksgiving weekend.
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