Farm brings in pumpkins from different location due to drought

Mark Freeman has memories of customers struggling to carry his large locally-grown pumpkins to the counter, but now those pumpkins aren’t so local.

Freeman, owner of Bloomington’s Freeman Family Farms, has grown 80 percent less Jack-o’-Lantern pumpkins on his farm this year due to extended dry weather.

Freeman Family Farms also owns another farm in Greene County, Ind. The Jack-o’-Lantern pumpkins at that farm received enough rain to grow properly. Now Freeman ships his Greene County pumpkins to Bloomington and sets them in a barren field for customers to pick.

Lack of rainfall hurts a lot of the farm’s crops, but pumpkins were especially hard hit.

Jack-o’-Lantern pumpkins require a lot of water to grow, Freeman said. But without rain, the large pumpkins couldn’t grow.

“A pumpkin vine usually has three or four large pumpkins on it. The vines had one pumpkin the size of a small ball,” Freeman said.

Although the Jack-o’-Lantern pumpkins suffered, Freeman said smaller pumpkins used for pumpkin pie and tiny decorative pumpkins grew as planned.

“We increase our farming every year,” Freeman said. “You have to plan.”

In 10 years of farming, Freeman said he has never had a pumpkin crop so gravely affected by weather. The only year that comes close was the year when the pumpkins suffered from too much rain

“I maybe lost 5 to 10  percent of the pumpkins due to rot,” Freeman said referring to excess of rain at the time. “But kids kicked and smashed more than we lost.”

Freeman said he has faith in his customer base and he sees a lot of the same faces at the pumpkin patch year after year.

Bloomington resident Lisa Prince is one of those familiar faces. She said she didn’t think she would be able to buy pumpkins this year.

“I was really surprised there were pumpkins,” Prince said. “I tried to grow some myself, but they didn’t grow.”

On the Freeman Family Farms’ website, there are advertisements for pumpkins despite the drought. This information drew Bloomington resident Kay White to the Freeman Family Farms pumpkin patch this year for the first time.

“I was surprised they had pumpkins,” White said. “I came because it was the only one close to where we live, and I was sure they had pumpkins.”

Freeman said customers also come to see donkeys, goats and cows that are in the barn for them  to pet. He said he thinks these family-friendly attractions will also bring in business.

“We’ve become a place where people share with their families,” Freeman said. “Business will be okay.”