Bridget Veltri
arts@mustangdaily.net
With all the abnormally hot weather, it may not feel much like fall. But that hasn’t stopped the Cal Poly crops club from selling pumpkins and letting the public pick their own right from the patch.
The seeds for the club’s largest fall fundraiser were planted in June. Now, every Tuesday and Thursday in October members of the crops club can be found selling pumpkins in front of the crops unit from 3 to 6 p.m.
“This is our main fall event,” said fruit science senior and crops club reporter Kristin Warda. “We look forward to doing this.”
You’ve seen pumpkins piled high in grocery store bins waiting for someone to give them a nice welcoming Halloween home. Now you get a chance to see exactly where those pumpkins come from.
Besides selling pumpkins, the crops club also teaching about them. This year, crops club members gave local kindergarteners and one pre-school class their first lesson in agriculture when they took a field trip out to the patch.
Imagine bus loads of kindergarteners traipsing through the patch carrying as many pumpkins as their little arms can carry for the bargain price of $1 each. The classes came out Wednesday and Friday mornings several weeks in October.
“It was a rough overview of how a seed grows and becomes a pumpkin,” crop science junior and crops club social chair John Molatore said. “We basically taught them that pumpkins don’t grow on trees, and then let them loose.”
The fields are normally closed to the public, and kindergarteners weren’t the only ones allowed to choose their pumpkins straight from the patch. The crops club held U-picks at the patch every Saturday, giving locals the opportunity to find the perfect pumpkin in the two acres at field 25 instead of a grocery store bin.
“U-picks has been great,” crop science senior and vice president of the crops club Dan Polla said. “We’ve had a lot of people that have been coming out and kids running around picking up pumpkins.”
Three-year-old Makena Porter and her sister Kailani, 1, roamed the patch inspecting every pumpkin while their nanny, Cal Poly alumna Autumn Cipriano supervised.
“I grew up here and remember coming out here as a child,” Cipriano said. “Here you are actually in the patch picking out your own pumpkin; it’s really fun for them.”
Molatore is hoping that more people will make the pilgrimage to the Cal Poly pumpkin patch and make it a fall tradition.
“A lot of people don’t realize this is Cal Poly land and that the agriculture department does this,” he said. “Anybody can go to the store and buy a pumpkin but here at Cal Poly you can find your special pumpkin and cut it yourself straight from the patch.”
Pumpkin prices range from $3 to $7 and gourds are $1-$5.
Proceeds from pumpkin sales go to the Cal Poly crops club. The pumpkin patch is located in front of the crops unit on the corner of Mt. Bishop Road and Highland Drive.