Thursday, 4:30 PM
It is the great pumpkin shortage
By Megan Tench
Globe Staff
Fall is usually the favorite and most profitable time of the year for many of New England’s fruit and vegetable farmers. Children enjoy hay rides, fresh cider, and apple picking in orchards bathed in autumn reds and oranges. But this year’s fall season may face a shortage of a season favorite: great big pumpkins to carve into jack-o’-lanterns, bake into pies, or decorate porches and backyards.
The torrential rains and floods that devastated the region in May and the mix of cool and humid weather that followed in the summer, and the bugs the weather brought, have left many farmers with patches of rotten seeds and crops of small, green, unripened pumpkins.
‘‘It was a hard growing season,’’ said Ray Mong of Applefield Farm in Stow. ‘‘The weather was tough. The yield was light and the bugs were heavy.’’
The dearth of pumpkins has left farmers scrambling for short-term fixes, especially in the worst-affected farmlands, low-lying areas of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex counties.
Mong of Applefield Farm — 25 acres of apple orchards and fields that produce flowers, fruit, and vegetables — bought pumpkins from a farm in nearby Concord that was spared the worst flooding. He plans to spread them in his pumpkin patch, so children on the hayrides will still have great pickings to choose from.
‘‘Farmers are adaptable,’’ said Mong, who declined to give details of how his pumpkin plan will affect his bottom line. ‘‘We had to get creative and make sure we got a good crop.’’
