A spooky season for eastern Ontario pumpkin patches facing drought conditions

The lack of rain this summer means pumpkins are smaller at some eastern Ontario farms. CTV’s Kimberley Johnson reports.

It’s a staple of the season – grabbing that beautiful photo, on a beautiful autumn day at the pumpkin patch. But depending on where you go in the region, the farm may have had a tougher year growing those gourds.

Months of dry weather have affected some farms and others are helping them out.

Vic Bakker says Cannamore Orchard, in Crysler, Ont., southeast of Ottawa, has had a tough season.

“This one is probably half the size it should be,” she says of the few pumpkins she has on the vine.

Bakker says she planted hundreds of seeds across 4 acres but was hit with tough weather conditions.

“We had a drought,” she explains. “We had a significant period of over six weeks where there was no rain or next to no rain. Like the weather forecast would say, scattered showers. And I’m looking at the sky going where? Because it was not happening here.”

She says that dry weather, mixed with a broken irrigation system on the farm, meant they instead had to buy hundreds of pumpkins this year. She says they then placed them in their pumpkin patch to meet the needs of the thousands of visitors that come through the farm throughout October.

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“It’s heartbreaking to know that… you’re doing all the things that you’re supposed to do,” she says. “Then you get the crop into the ground… Yes, they are indeed germinating and (then) consistently no rain.”

Just 40 minutes away it was a different story at Millers Farm in Manotick. The owner, Ron Miller, says the farm had a fruitful year.

“I called the office manager and said to him, ‘I can’t believe the crop that’s in here,’” he says in an interview with CTV News Ottawa. “And he said to me, ‘I can’t believe you’re so excited over pumpkins.’ I said, ‘Yes because I thought they wouldn’t be any bigger than my head this year!’”

The farm supplied Cannamore Orchard with 700 pumpkins.

Miller says they grow pumpkins on 50 acres, using only rain with no irrigation system as a back up.

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Miller says farms further north and closer to the Ottawa River received more rain.

“That’s farming sometimes. Maybe (Cannamore Orchard) might have to help me out next year. Who knows? That’s what it is for farmers. We help each other out.”

At Cannamore Orchard, the loss of the pumpkins is a financial hit, but Bakker says their biggest draw is their haunted house and wagon ride called Acres of Terror. She says that will help them survive a scary season.

“Luckily we are an agritourism business too,” she explains. “So, we have to lean into the family activities.”