CARBON COUNTY, Pa. — From white pumpkins to peanut pumpkins to the basic orange kind, you'll find whatever kind of pumpkin you're looking for at Crystal Spring Tree Farm in Mahoning Township.
Despite hearing of a pumpkin shortage, owner Chris Botek says he has plenty and owes it all to the wet weather.
"It was the great weather. We went through a dry spell early in the summer, late spring, and we got all the pumpkins in, and the rain came, and they took it up," Botek said.
Botek runs a retail and major wholesale operation near Lehighton, planting about 30 varieties of pumpkins to sell. He says he spaced out plantings to protect himself from having a bad crop across the board.
"I try to break it up into three different plantings, like within 10 days, maybe. This way, sometimes, your last planting, you benefit the best from. Sometimes, your first one, it spreads out a little bit. You don't do it all in one day. "
Down the road from Crystal Spring is Yenser's Tree Farm. They also have great pumpkins, and their corn stalks turned out great for their corn maze, just ahead of their fall fest.
"Our corn maze this year is the best maze we've had in eight years because of the weather," said co-owner Ryan Wentz. "this year it's 9, 10,11 feet, planted both ways, which really helps with a density."
The pumpkins for Wentz's retail operation this year are long and tall or round and fat. He's grateful for both after a rough growing season last year.
"We planted them at the same time, end of May, beginning of June, middle of June. And early on, it was very dry, like we said before, so we were like, it can't be two years in a row," Wentz said. "Then we had the rain and just extremely lucky that we had the growth that we had."
Fall Fests at Yenser's Tree Farm and Crystal Spring Tree Farm kick off this week.
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