Farm invites visitors for apple picking as its pumpkin crop failed this year
28th October 2024
Failed pumpkin crops prompted a farm located near Manchester to invite its visitors for apple picking instead.
This time of the year fields at Boundary Farm in Dunham Massey were usually orange from pumpkins but the season of 2024 is unfortunately very different.
The owner, Jonathan Hewitt, said that the crop failed in June, shortly after the seeds were sown.
For the last 30 years, the farm had been producingg over 150,000 pumpkins every autumn, but this year there are just 600.
Mr Hewitt told the BBC: “We drilled 45,000 pumpkin seeds and the period just after sowing it went very cold, it went very wet, and it just didn’t happen.
“There is nothing worse than us having to say ‘this has failed’.”
Pumpkins swapped for apples
The loss of the crop meant that the farm has lost half of its annual income.
However, it also specialises in growing 70 different varieties of apples, turning them later into juice and cider.
This prompted the farm owner, Mr Hewitt, and his brother Chris to swap pumpkins for apples this season.
Visitors of Boundary Farm have been invited to pick their apples as well as to watch how the apple juice is made.
According to the BBC, the brothers hope that in the longer term the apple picking will prove a more sustainable business than the single October crop of pumpkins.
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