Pumpkins are in Season Despite Drought

Pumpkins are in season after a dry summer. Despite the drought and disease, Brad Chmielewski of Stony Brook Farms says pumpkins are ready to be picked.

I kind of like the smells of the pumpkins and the squash and the smell of fall with everything cooling down and the leaves falling and that kind of thing. But, we do get a lot of joy from bringing people out to our farm on our corn maze and pumpkin patch and stuff,  for them to see what it's like on the farm and play around on the hay bales.

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Chmielewski says they started harvesting the pumpkins in mid August, but the drought effected the size and number of pumpkins.

We don't like to rely on irrigation to make a crop, but we kind of didn't have a choice this year. The crops really suffered. The quality wasn't there, I don't think. The Size was small. And, a lot of our pumpkins on dry land didn't size up, so we have one pumpkin per plant, where normally we'd have four or five.

The pumpkins can also get fungal diseases, which killed many of this year's pumpkins. Chmielewski says they lost 150 acres to disease and drought this year.

Despite the dry summer, you can go pick your own pumpkins as part of Harvest Fun Days at Stony Brook Farms every weekend until Halloween from 11 to six.