Pumpkin patches see a bright side to scorching summer

The hot, dry summer may have led to scorched fields and smaller crop yields - but pumpkin farmers have welcomed bigger, more colourful produce in time for Halloween.

"There's probably a few less pumpkins per plant this year than some years," says Jen Barker, who runs Yorkshire Pumpkins with her husband Rob.

The couple, who are based Cundall near Thirsk, have produced this year's crop without external irrigation which has affected their total yield.

"We got rain in May which let the pumpkins germinate and that's the critical bit for us," says Rob, who is a third-generation farmer.

"If we don't have the rain there we don't get anything."

Despite a dry summer, the Barkers think there are positives to the conditions, with some species thriving in the heat.

"A lot of them are from South America so they are very used to hot weather," says Rob.

"Because it's been so sunny, the colours are amazing and so actually there's less rots."

Jen agrees: "They are healthier overall and the colours this year look really good so the yellows are really yellow and the reds are really red."

The couple are currently supported by a sustainable farming incentive (SFI) from the government but are worried what will happen when this funding runs out.

"We were given money to farm in a regenerative way, there's benefits to us from a long-term sustainability point of view and there's huge benefits environmentally from a biodiversity point of view," says Rob.

"It's quite disappointing at the moment that the latest SFI sold out in less than six hours.

"We're still in a scheme but I don't know what will happen when that runs out."

Three miles away in Sessay, another farm which produces pumpkins has turned to irrigation to help their crops.

"Three years ago we had a very wet summer so that made that summer very difficult in a different way to this summer which was very dry," says Tom Spilman, who runs Spilmans.

Spilman has invested in an irrigation system to increase water delivery to his crops, meaning this year he has about 175,000 pumpkins to sell.

"For the last two summers we've had very, very dry weather and we've had to irrigate our crops quite heavily just to keep them growing," says Spilman.

"If we hadn't had irrigation we would have no crop or a very small crop.

"It's been tough that we've had to irrigate, it's expensive, it's a lot of work and a lot of labour but then it also means that we have a crop at the end of it.

"If we rely on irrigation we need to take water out of the rivers and that's not always available and we need to think about alternatives."

Forty miles south in Pontefract, another pick-your-own pumpkin patch is noticing different colours to what they would normally expect due to the weather.

"Whites have done extremely well for some reason, so have Polar Bears, Blanco, we've got some really great whopping whites," says Jack Walker, farm manager at Farmer Copley's.

"What we'd say is a nice standard orange one, they haven't done so well."

Farmer Copley's is aiming to produce 350,000 pumpkins this year but without being able to irrigate the crops like other farms do, they say their overall yield will be affected.

"We haven't got any big rivers nearby to pull from," says Walker.

"We are trying to harvest as much water as we can from buildings and sheds but a lot of that has been used in a strawberry crop."

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