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| Farmers prepare for pumpkin pilgrims By Mark Noack [ mark@hmbreview.com ] Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 1:55 PM PDT As the October pumpkin season begins, Half Moon Bay farmers prepare for their most important and busiest time of the year, when they play tour guide to thousands of out-of-towners who flock to the Coastside to celebrate everyone’s favorite orange squash. But farmers say the lucrative pumpkin season can be a big roll of the dice, pushing them to stake huge amounts of work and money in the hopes of making as much as half of their annual profit in a few weeks. For many farms, that means a rapid transformation from selling flowers and fruit to hosting a family-fun hot spot for parents and kids intent on the ultimate pumpkin patch. “On a good weekend day, we can make about $10,000,” said Scott Pastorino, operations manager at H Pastorino & Sons farm. “So we prepare for this all year long, making sure we have staff and doing training.” Pastorino says that since Labor Day, his family’s farm has been setting up temporary structures for the pumpkin rush, including a gift barn, pony ring, food kiosk and a lot of signs and advertisements. Those preparations are worth it, Pastorino says. On most October weekends, the 250-car parking lot for his farm fills up, with dozens more vehicles parking farther down Highway 92. This leads Pastorino to believe that as many as 5,000 visitors come out on a good day. The rush of pumpkin pursuers is less eagerly anticipated by many of the Coastside’s non-farming families. That’s because the two-lane, 45-mph highway running between Interstate 280 and Half Moon Bay can slow to banana-slug speed. A big fan of pumpkin season, Los Altos resident Christy Wu remembers making the mistake of driving over the hill around 2 p.m. on an October Saturday, which led to an hour-and-a-half of non-stop traffic slogging its way into Half Moon Bay. But despite being eight months pregnant at the time, Wu says that she and her 4-year-old son had a wonderful time once they finally got out of the car. “The traffic was insane at prime time, but it’s California so there are always too may people,” Wu said. “But overall going to the farms was a positive experience. The pictures were great, and it was so much fun to go to those places even though they’re crazy.” As they have done in previous years, the farms along the highway corridor are paying California Highway Patrol officers to direct traffic for pedestrians to cross. The officers will be out on both days of Pumpkin Festival, and the following weekend days, Oct 25 and 26. The CHP will be monitoring traffic from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., but they will only be stopping traffic when necessary. Bob Lemos of the Lemos Farm says it’s necessary to have the CHP control traffic, even though no one really likes the system. The six traffic-control officers generally halt all traffic on the highway about every 15 minutes so that people can cross from one attraction to another. “The pedestrians give us a bad time for asking them to wait to cross, and certainly the drivers sometimes call us up and complain as well,” Lemos said. “And it’s my understanding that (county supervisor) Rich Gordon gets calls every year about the traffic problems on 92 during pumpkin season.” Most agree that CHP officers do prevent accidents from occurring, but that precaution has a hefty price tag. “Having the CHP out on those weekends costs each of the farms about $8,000,” Pastorino said. “But it’s a necessary evil.” Despite all of that preparation, the farms are still reliant on the weather. “Last year it rained for five or six days, and that meant a lot of field trips were washed out, and we couldn’t rebook.” Pastorino said. “Usually if there’s rain then, it will severely dampen our target goal.” Farmer John Muller says that the weather is one more thing to worry about during a hectic season for farmers. “The weather is so important for we farmers. By November we’re begging for rain for our crops,” Muller said. “But we don’t want rain before that. October is when we want nice Coastside weather.” |