SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — The pumpkin selection in Onondaga County is looking different this Halloween season. A drought that impacted most of Upstate New York has stinted pumpkin growth – giving farm customers endless options to pick from if they would like a small pumpkin, but restricting the choices for large-pumpkin lovers.
Mary DeTomaso is a frequent customer of The Pumpkin Hollow, a farm that has been experiencing this pumpkin issue, and said that she knows what to expect when she makes her annual trip to the pumpkin patch.
“My grandson has his birthday here every year,” DeTomaso said. “A lot of my neighbors in the neighborhood come here too.”
However, this pumpkin season looked different for DeTomaso and her family. The Pumpkin Hollow had piles of small, $2 pumpkins stacked on top of each other, but the selection of extra-large, $15 pumpkins was scarce.
While DeTomaso is personally a fan of smaller pumpkins, she said that she suspects others might not be too pleased.
“I’m sure most people like the bigger ones. I like to scatter them through my garden – make it look pretty,” DeTomaso said.
A Pumpkin Hollow employee, Cooper Weinman, said that although the drought caused the pumpkins to be smaller this year, the dry weather was beneficial in the sense that it helped with crop survival. Last year’s weather was very wet, causing a lot of the crops to die.
“It was kind of a waiting game,” Weinman said. “You just kind of hope everything goes well and they [the pumpkins] were smaller, but we still had the numbers we were looking for.”
With the holiday season approaching, The Pumpkin Hollow will soon be selling Christmas trees with the hopes that their trees will not face the same size decrease as their pumpkins.
