CONNECTICUT | October 17, 2000 -- Although it takes a crew of 15, working from dawn to dusk every day through Halloween, to pick 120 acres of pumpkins on Sandy Cohen's Tolland County farm, this farmer wishes he had more to harvest this year.
So does grocer extraordinaire Stew Leonard Jr., who traditionally relies on Cohen and other Connecticut farmers to supply the pumpkins that wind up on customers' doorsteps and dinner tables throughout the tri-state area every Halloween season.
But relentless summer rain has hurt the pumpkin crop tremendously this year in Connecticut, forcing Leonard, president and CEO of his family's Norwalk-based dairy mega-store chain, and other retailers to scramble to find out-of-state pumpkin patches to meet demand.
Stew Leonard's, which expects to sell 200,000 pumpkins within a few weeks, had to seek sources as far away as Ohio and Pennsylvania.
"What happened this year is that, for the first time, we had to really go down and knock on doors throughout the Amish country. We got a lot of pumpkins from many of these Amish farms that weren't as affected by rain," Leonard said.
"We've been doing this for over 20 years. This is the first time that we've had to bring that type of quantity in from outside Connecticut," said Leonard, who added that even though his fuel transport costs are higher, the retail price of this year's pumpkins has not increased.
In an estimated $150 million national pumpkin-growing industry, Connecticut is second only to Massachusetts in the New England market. About 1,500 acres are cultivated in Connecticut.
The weather has forced many farmers to replant, especially in flooded areas, according to Ron Olsen, a state Department of Agriculture marketing representative.
"There's not an overwhelming supply this fall," Olsen said, "but there's enough to keep the farmers in business."
Olsen, however, predicted retail prices would rise this year around 15 cents a pound.
"It's been a tough year," said Cohen, one of Leonard's main suppliers, who has been running his 285-acre farm in Ellington since the 1970s. The pumpkin crop is just not as bountiful as in years past, he said, but the quality of the pumpkins is very good.
Pumpkin farmers blame it on the bees. In wet weather, bees, which pollinate blossoms, stay in their hives. In mid-July, the constant rain drenched the first set of pumpkin flower blossoms. A drop of water can drown a bee. So if the bees don't come out, the flowers don't get pollinated, and there's no pumpkin, Cohen said.
Irv Silverman, whose Easton farm offers hay rides through his apple orchards and pumpkin patches, is thankful that most of the pumpkins he sells are grown in New York state, which didn't suffer from summer rains.
"We grow some pumpkins, but we have a lot that are grown for us because we sell so many and I just don't have enough property. So we are fine. We have a very good supply, but a lot of farms on the East Coast are short," said Silverman, who added that he hopes the dry weather continues during their busy fall foliage tourist season.
Richard Ashley, a vegetable crop specialist at the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension Service in Storrs, also blames the weather for the shortage.
"The important time is when the pumpkins come into bloom," he said. "If the pumpkins were flowering during those periods of excessive rain and high humidity and there was poor pollination, there would be little fruit set."
Ashley said crops may vary from farm to farm.
Though many state farmers are feeling the effects of the rainy summer, they have not forgotten how difficult the summer of 1999 was, with scorching temperatures causing drought conditions.
"Last year, we were buying tankers of water for the orchard," Silverman said. "I went out and bought a big sprinkler system with over a half-mile of pipe. It's never been out of the box."
Silverman said that since he can control pests and fungus, but not Mother Nature, he has no plans to return the unused irrigation equipment.
"It's like an insurance policy," Silverman said. "You never want to use it, but its good to have."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
