Combination of factors lead to 'worst' pumpkin harvest in decades

CENTERFIELD — The Beck family says a combination of really bad factors all lent to what is turning out to be a horrible pumpkin season for them and other growers around Sanpete County. Dave Beck, who has been running Beck Family Farms for 35 years, says it's the worst he's seen.

"I can't wait for this year to be over and get going into next year," he said. "Normally, we'll get 15 to 20 tons per acre. We didn't have any fields that went 10 ton to the acre this year."

Beck says the difficulties started with the drought conditions.

"Our reservoir was empty on the 1st of June," he explained. "Our pumpkin crop, where we normally do 3,000 tons of pumpkins, this year we grew about 600 tons."

Beck now runs the business alongside his daughter, Keisha Otten, who says the bad news continued into the summer months, as the Widemouth 2 Fire to the south blew thick smoke into the area.

"At a prime time for pollination, the bees didn't come out, because the smoke was so thick over here," she said. "And if you don't get your plants pollinated, then they don't produce."

"Then we had record-breaking heat," Beck added. "The record high temperatures also made the pollination go way down."

The unfortunate combination of factors led to very low yields at the family farm, which supplies pumpkins to several major grocery store chains across Utah and Nevada.

"We had a 60-acre field last year that produced 1,000 tons of pumpkins," Beck recalled. "This year, because its main pollination time was right in August, it produced 20 pumpkins. Twenty total pumpkins."

Farmers tend to be consummate optimists, however. Otten says the family still has a wide variety of squashes and gourds available in their own farmer's market. Additional attractions on the farm, like a hay maze, and miniature golf course, also draw schools and families looking for entertainment. Beck says on a positive note, they ended up with an ample supply of pie pumpkins, with about 60 bins still remaining. They've decided to use those supplies to run a food drive for the local food bank.

"People bring in a food item, and we'll give them a pie pumpkin," Beck said.

Beck and Otten say grocery stores won't likely run out of pumpkins, however, as they're already looking to farms in California to help fill in the lost supply. They, however, warn that procrastinators may be faced with few options if they wait until the last minute.

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