While some parts of the country are seeing a shortage in their pumpkin crops this fall, Richmond County farmers and business owners seem to be doing just fine.

“It looks live I’ve had plenty this year,” said David Sherrill of David’s Produce in Ellerbe.

Some of the complaints north of Richmond County and into Virginia have been that the crop is too limited this year and that the size of pumpkins has also shrunk.

“You hear the same thing just about every year,” David said. “I’ve got a good variety this year.”

Lee Berry, owner of the Berry Patch between Ellerbe and Rockingham said he’s heard of a pumpkin shortage in Indiana which is a big pumpkin-growing state, but that around here, things seem to be doing OK.

“We haven’t noticed much of a difference at all,” Berry said. “In our Sandhills area, I can’t tell a difference.”

Berry grows his own pumpkins, but supplements his crop with pumpkins from other local growers, who all seem to have done OK this year.

Barbara Johnson of Johnson’s Peaches on Highway 220 said this year’s pumpkin crop wasn’t as “pretty” as years’ past, but that she still had a nice crop.

Johnson said they grow all their own pumpkins and said this year’s crop was smaller in size because there wasn’t as much rain.

“You’ve got to have quite a bit of water,” Johnson said.

She added that some farmers will use milk feed or sugar feed to feed the pumpkin crop but her farm only uses water, so the pumpkins are all natural with zero additives.

Bert Auman and his daughter Janet Pavlic from Orlando, Fla., stopped at Johnson’s Monday after a family reunion weekend in Asheboro to pick out two pumpkins to take back home.

Auman said what he looks for in a good pumpkin is the texture, color, and like watermelon, the sound.

He said he uses the pumpkins for decorations until Halloween when his wife boils them and uses them to make about six pumpkin pies, all from scratch.

Because the spring and summer was a lot more damp for states in the northeast and Midwest this year, the pumpkin crop was impacted and some states’ harvest is down by about 50 percent.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 92,955 acres were devoted to growing pumpkins in 2007, compared with 25,985 in 1982.

And whole pumpkins may not be the only kind suffering as a weak pumpkin season in Illinois, another big pumpkin producer, has reduced the supply of canned pumpkin. But as the weather dries out in those areas the crops are seeing a turnaround and producers believe there will be enough pumpkin, canned and fresh, to get folks through the holidays.

n Staff writer Eren Tataragasi can be reached at 910-997-3111 ext. 19, or by e-mail at etataragasi@yourdailyjournal.com.