A Sussex company has sold over one million pumpkins over four weeks in the run up to Halloween.
Barfoots is one of the UK’s biggest pumpkin growers and has seen high demand in the spooky season this year.
The company, alongside its growing partner in Cambridgeshire, grow culinary, carving, munchkin, ghost and goosebump pumpkins.
At its busiest time last year, the firm delivered the equivalent of 40 lorry loads of pumpkins in one day alone.
Kim Barfoot-Brace of Barfoots said: “Carving pumpkins, whilst edible, have thinner walls and are easier to carve. Culinary pumpkins are meatier and sweeter but the thicker walls mean they’re not so easy to carve.”
The company grows almost 250 acres of pumpkins across its farms, with harvesting beginning in early September. They are given a clean, before being laid on fleece to wait for a flood of orders in October.
However, wet weather can pose a challenge and threaten to rot the pumpkins before they get a chance to go on display outside people’s homes.
Speaking to Waitrose Weekend magazine, Neil Cairns, head of crop production at Barfoots, said: “The nice thing with the pumpkin crop is we get to see the results of our work, looking bright and cheerful outside people’s houses.”
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