Perfect pumpkin doesn’t always come in orange

DANIEL CLIFTON • PICAYUNE EDITOR

TOBYVILLE — With five kids old enough to understand the value of picking a proper pumpkin for Halloween, Wendy Garrett also understands the importance of letting the kids sort through a few — or a bunch — before settling on one.

Well, maybe more than one.

“We usually get out of here with five pumpkins,” she said with a laugh, while she and her kids were at Sweet Berry Farm one fall day. They were there to have fun, but, in the end, it was about picking pumpkins.

Garrett takes a pragmatic approach to picking a pumpkin.

“The main thing we look for is a pumpkin with a rather flat face, so we can carve it or paint it,” she said.

Her kids, however, pore over a trailer full of pumpkins. Not traditional orange pumpkins but white ones of all sizes.

“I didn’t even know you could get a white pumpkin,” Hailey Garret said. At 12, she’s the oldest of the kids, but she doesn’t try to force her opinion on her siblings. As her younger sisters, Reese, 10, and Paige, 8, push aside pumpkins, hoist up a few and scrutinize them, Hailey acknowledged the possibility of taking one, or two, maybe more, home. “I think they’re cool because mostly I get an orange one. But a white one — that would be different.”

Mom, however, isn’t about to settle for the first few pumpkins the kids see, and like. Just as if looking for the “perfect” Christmas tree, assessing the perfect pumpkin means looking at a bunch, including the typical orange ones, before making a decision.

Dan Copeland, who owns Sweet Berry Farm along with his wife, Gretchen, has seen a few pumpkins (more like a few truckloads) in his time. When asked about picking the perfect pumpkin, though, he hesitated at offering any insight.

“I don’t think there is a perfect pumpkin. It’s just so abstract,” he said. “I like big ones. I like small ones. I like round ones. I like the odd ones. It just depends. Everybody has a different idea of the perfect pumpkin. Sometimes, you don’t even know what it is until you see it.”

Copeland added there is one thing everybody seems to agree on when it comes to pumpkins.

“The only consistent thing everybody has is it must have a stem. That’s the only thing everybody agrees on – it has to have a stem.”

To make pumpkins last a bit longer once you get them home, Copeland recommends keeping them in the shade and out of direct sunlight. If possible, bring them inside during the hottest part of the day.

Once carved, pumpkins quickly deteriorate, but adding some Fruit Fresh can stave it off a bit longer, he added.

While the Garrett group was still elbow high in white pumpkins, Penny, the youngest of the girls, grabbed one about the same size as her. She struggled a bit to move it before Reese reached over and gave her a hand.

“You might need a little smaller one,” Reese said.

Toddler Jacob toddled over to another group of pumpkins nearby. He grabbed a bumpy long-necked orange one and hauled it back to the family. Yeah, it looked interesting, but it wasn’t quite right for carving or painting. One of the girls took it back for Jacob, who didn’t seem to mind because by the time she returned, he was bounding off to a pile of more traditional orange pumpkins.

“C’mon,” mother Wendy said. “We have a lot of things we can do here before we finally pick our pumpkins. And you never know what we’ll find out here.”

But that’s the beauty of hunting the perfect pumpkin, it could just be lurking in that next pile.

daniel@thepicayune.com