Pumpkin season is right around the corner, but the effort for the produce has been in process for a while, with things happening faster than usual.
“Typically, we don’t have vine breakage until late September," said Shawn Callaway, co-owner of Brookshire Farms. "They started breaking down about a week ago due to just, I think, conditions."
The heat is one of the conditions the farm has been monitoring, leading crews to pick some of the crop early Wednesday morning.
“If we pick them before it gets too hot, then we’ll save a lot of the crop from getting ruined by the heat because we’re going to have heat over the next couple of days and it can ruin this whole entire thing if we don’t get to it,” said Luke Dale, a Brookshire Farms employee.
Callaway said the pumpkins no longer have the vine coverage and, if left out, would not last more than a week; even if they are, what he calls, "cooking."
“The pumpkins they almost like cook from the inside," Dale said. "The moisture gets taken out of them, and they’re soft, and then they’re no good anymore.”
Callaway said that the farm lost about 50 pumpkins due to the heat. The rest were put in boxes under a shaded area where they’ll be good for up to three months. He added that they’ve been trying to water their pumpkins during the early mornings or late evenings in order to preserve the crop.
“It’s better for the plants so it doesn’t steam the plants, so a lot of times if you’re watering too much in the heat of the day that moisture will actually steam it," Callaway said. "Corn’s a little bit different, but the pumpkins are definitely more sensitive to it.”
Pumpkins aren't the only thing affected. Callaway said the corn for their corn maze is growing rapidly, already standing about two feet taller than normal for this time of year.
“I can’t explain why we’re accelerating, but our crop is probably the best we’ve seen for the maze; it’s consistent between 7 feet and 9 feet already,” Callaway said.
