Larry Hauser and Teresa Hauser stood Wednesday on the edge of a field and watched with smiles as one by one, children picked out a pumpkin and hauled it off.
For 16 years, Larry Hauser has watched the scene unfold, and he still isn’t tired of it.
“I really enjoy the kids,” he said. “And now, I’m starting to second generations from who first came here when they were older. It’s fun.”
Hauser opens up his one-acre field of pumpkins every year as families wander the one-acre plot and pick a pumpkin. This year was his busiest.
“Saturday was like a zoo here,” Hauser said. “I had cars parked all the way down the road.”
Hauser, 76, is a retired newspaper printer with a farm north of Cortez on Road L. He raised ostriches, but as he sold them off, he looked out one day and thought to himself, “What can I grow there?”
The answer has made his property a popular spot for families to stop in the fall.
“I love that everyone takes pictures. They sometimes show me how people are growing over the years. And now I have second generations coming back,” he said.
This year, for the first time in 16 years, Hauser had to turn a few schools away.
“We just don’t have enough pumpkins to go around,” Hauser said Wednesday as a bus of students unloaded. “I had to tell a few schools not to come.”
His field was nearly stripped bare Wednesday.
“I just don’t have enough pumpkins for them,” he said.
Hauser estimated he grew about 2,500 pumpkins this year, but it wasn’t enough to meet demand. And although he still has a few dotting his field, he picked up pumpkins from Safeway this year to fulfill his annual tradition of delivering pumpkins to the Dolores School District bought by the Dolores Food Market. After being carved by the older Dolores students, they are displayed on Halloween night in front of the Dolores Food Market.
But when asked if he’ll grow pumpkins next year, he hesitated.
“I really want to travel while I can,” Hauser said.
Teresa Hauser, his daughter and Alan Seaton, helped Hauser out this year and hope to continue the tradition.
“It’s hard work, I never realized how much hard work it is,” Teresa said. “There is more to it than throwing seeds out there.”
When you are a pumpkin farmer, Teresa said, there is a lot to worry about. You worry about a late frost, and about an early frost that will kill the pumpkin. And there is weeding and watering.
But it is all worth it.
“After that first freeze, when the vines die down and there is a sea of gold and orange pumpkins in the field, it is all worth it,” Teresa said.
Hauser said his plants produced a little less this year, but other local farmers, one which didn’t want to be named because they grew their pumpkins for charity, said they got rid of every one of their pumpkins too.
Bobbe Jones, who grew pumpkins for the last several years, didn’t grow any this year.
“We actually had the seed and everything to do it this year,” she said. “But we were doing home improvements this year and just didn’t have the time.”
Jones said they might grow pumpkins again next year.
But the county seemed to be pumpkin-crazy this year as both Safeway and Wal-Mart were out and City Market was running out on Wednesday.
Hauser still had a few dotting his field.
“We get families out here. That is what keeps us going, it is all the generations we’ve had out here,” Teresa said.
