The Pumpkin Patch: How forward-thinking farm's autumn crop brings visitors to quiet Hornsea

“The whole Hallowe’en thing was already becoming big when we started,” said Jason. “But the past four or five years we’ve seen it really take off. We have kept upping our numbers a little bit each year as demand has dictated and now our trade is split around 50/50 between the pick your own (PYO) where people can come into the field and choose their own pumpkin, and wholesale for local farm shops and garden centres.

Homeland Farm is ablaze with orange right now with the ever-popular Mars and Spitfire varieties that have become synonymous with the Hallowe’en festivities.

Jason, his family and friends pride themselves on putting up such a colourful display in the Dutch barn and Jason said this year he hopes the new Pumpkin House (pictured here) will be another feature attraction.

“It’s something a little bit different. I can’t take all the credit for it. You see things that people do in other countries like America, where Hallowe’en is so big, and you take something and try to put your own twist on it. It’s all about keeping things fresh with new ideas.

“I’m sure it will be a first for Holderness and will provide a real photo opportunity for visitors young and old. It’s all about keeping things interesting, things for people to do while they are here, like our noughts and squashes game too.

“Pumpkin House has been constructed with a metal frame and we have clad it with hessian and then built up and surrounded it with pumpkins, using smaller ones for the windows and door frames. It also has a thatched roof and a weathervane on top as finishing touch. It’s real Hansel and Gretel style house.

Jason said he’s happy with this year’s crop of pumpkins and squashes.

“This year has been warm and dry. They have grown nicely and are particularly good looking but our actual yield maybe down on what it has been previous years.

“We don’t have the infrastructure for irrigating so we have been relying on what little moisture has been in the ground, and what little has come out of sky. Luckily, the pumpkins got their feet down and found some moisture. We have relatively heavyish land and that holds its moisture, which has been a benefit to us this time.

Jason served his apprenticeship as an agricultural engineer with Cherry’s in North Frodingham where he worked for nearly 20 years and said The Pumpkin Patch and now other produce including bedding plants, strawberries and sunflowers have changed his annual working pattern.

“With us now growing so many pumpkins and expansions into other areas plus what we do on the farm with more traditional crops such as growing winter wheat, winter beans and lately seed potatoes I am now here much of the year with just the winter period being when I either work on pea viners or look after others’ farm machinery.

“While we grow many different colours of pumpkin and squash it is still the orange of Mars and Spitfire that are what our customers want and they come from miles around. We are not too far from Hull, where we get a lot of our trade but many will come over the Humber Bridge from North Lincolnshire and we get a good West Yorkshire trade too.

Jason said that while the pumpkin is mostly used for carving at Hallowe’en there has been a lift in trade in customers purchasing as a vegetable too.

“Around 95 per cent of our trade is down to Hallowe’en and certainly a few years ago carving was nearly all they seemed to be used for, but these last few years people have started to cook and bake with them which they are great for and they store well and we are now growing some more culinary varieties and encouraging visitors to try pumpkin recipes. Tougher varieties like Crown Prince will keep right through to next spring.

“We set all of our pumpkins and squashes off around mid-late April each year. They start in individual pots in the greenhouse and we then set them off growing in the land in late May when we plant them with a little transplanting machine on back of our tractor.

Jason said his sunflowers will make another colourful addition to the scene this month.

“We have 2-3 acres of sunflowers just coming into flower now and looking really nice. Hopefully, they will be available at the same time as pumpkins and customers can come along with some secateurs and cut the flower stems off and whatever left is for the birds to use for winter for feed.

Jason knows that October is his big month and that Bewholme becomes alive with activity.

“We have pumpkin carving days, face painting, pumpkin games and on our PYO days we have a local pizza company selling woodfired pizzas from their converted horsebox. It is all go, but once October 31 has come it is as though someone has turned off a tap and so we have to put everything we have into this month.

“It’s a real family effort throughout the month with my wife Becky and our now four-year old twin girls Chloe and Holly, my sister and brother-in-law and mum and dad all involved along with friends who come and help.

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Jason’s grandfather Gordon Butler started at Bewholme with a few dairy cows and a few pigs on just a small acreage. Jason’s father Michael set up a joiner’s shop and over the past 25 years he and his wife Lesley, Jason’s mum, have gradually built up the farm to 65 acres where parcels of land have become available to take on around the village.

Jason said it is farmed between himself and his parents.

“We farm it together. This year we have grown 10 acres of winter beans, 13 acres of seed potatoes, 13-14 acres grass, 12 acres of pumpkins and 2-3 acres of sunflowers as well as growing a small acreage of PYO strawberries. We also try to put in clover to keep the soil in good condition.

“We would normally have winter wheat also but that wasn’t involved in this year’s cropping where we had planted seed potatoes instead.