2019/10/19

Aerial view of a pumpkin patch in Half Moon Bay, California

© Tinker Street/Michael O'Neal/Gallery Stock

If you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend, you might want to swing by the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival. The annual event displays enormous champion pumpkins weighing over a thousand pounds, hosts live pumpkin-carving demonstrations, and offers really every kind of pumpkin-related food you can imagine, from pies to pumpkin-flavored artisanal cocktails. Plus, Gourdy, the anthropomorphized pumpkin mascot. While California is the leader in the consumer pumpkin harvest, it is only the second-largest producer in the country. Illinois grows approximately a quarter of the 2 billion pounds of pumpkins the US produces yearly, though 80 percent of that ends up as pie filling or other processed products. Pumpkins require between 90-120 days to mature, so most are planted by late May or early June to coincide with our Halloween carving needs. While carving vegetables into faces is a tradition in many parts of the world, the carving of jack-o'-lanterns around Halloween originated in Ireland in the mid-19th century, using potatoes or turnips. Irish immigrants brought the tradition to the US around the same time and discovered that the native pumpkins were much easier to carve.