This little girl enjoyed a pumpkin in the Epiphany Parish Pumpkin Patch.
By James Kinneen
Hometown weekly reporter
If you haven’t been driving through Walpole Center recently, you might not realize that the Epiphany Parish Pumpkin Patch has returned for the season. But while pumpkin sales have become a Walpole tradition, a crazy twist this year resulted in more pumpkins than ever before.
During the annual Epiphany Pumpkin Patch, the church buys its pumpkins from a company called Pumpkin Patch Fundraisers, which leases land from Navajo Nation in Farmington, New Mexico and employs over 700 Navajo to operate the farm. Part of the sale of the patch goes to Epiphany Church to support their ministry and mission, while the rest of the money goes to Pumpkin Patch Fundraisers.
This year, however, increased demand put the Epiphany Parish in a unique position. As volunteer Laurie LaRusso explained, the number of pumpkins sold early meant the first time the community needed a second truck drop.
“Usually the pumpkins arrive on September 30th on a big truck and the Walpole Boy’s High School football team helps unload them. We only had to get a second full truck last weekend, and the soccer team and the National Honor Society came and helped us unload. “
Volunteer Laurie LaRusso said she saw people buy a wide variety of pumpkins, not just the typical big orange ones.
But Epiphany didn’t need a full truck worth of new pumpkins, and the pumpkin company wouldn’t send a third full truck all the way from New Mexico to Walpole.
However, when a church in North Attleboro crashed a pickup truck in their own area and destroyed a ton of their pumpkins, they had to be replaced. Fortunately, this church also gets its pumpkins from the same company as the Epiphany Parish. When the company sent a truck to replace the North Attleboro patch, it was also able to drive past Walpole and drop enough for Epiphany.
LaRusso said some of the patch’s new additions include ornamental pepper plants and gizmo pumpkins that look like pumpkin starfish. When she pushed for what everyone was buying, she explained that a lot of people like the little ones to go with their big ones – so much so that they sold them out.
When Halloween is over, the unsold pumpkins go to various farms where they are used as animal feed.
If you’re still waiting for a pumpkin, the parish is open on weekdays from 12 p.m. to 6 a.m. and on weekends from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. But if none of these work for you, you can also use their honor system and grab one at will.
“We’re only manned from 12 noon to 6 a.m. on weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 6 a.m. on weekends, so we have an honor box that is like a slit in the door. And we have some signs so people can measure their pumpkins because the measurement is the dollar value. You can say ‘my pumpkin is nine dollars’ and put nine dollars in the honor box when no one is around. “
The patch is open until Halloween, after which the pumpkins are turned into animal feed.
You should probably buy your pumpkin sooner rather than later. Eventually a pickup truck could crash and smash them all.
It’s very unlikely, but it has happened before.
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