It’s harvesting season for the Pumpkin Capital of Texas. Floydada farmers have been hard at work this week, getting pumpkins out of the fields.
“We pick pumpkins everyday,” says Tim Assiter, Owner of Assiter Punkin Ranch.
They pick everyday assuming the rain and other challenges do not get in the way.
“We’re just getting underway. We’ve been picking about a week,” Assiter says. “At harvest time, we need it to be nice and dry so we can get into the fields and get the pumpkins out.”
That’s the ideal weather Assiter hopes for during this time of year, because he says the rain can definitely hold them back.
“You’ll get stuck in the field when you try to push the trailer through, but then the mud sticks on the pumpkin and it creates issues as far as some mold or mildew problems. It’s mainly just a logistics problem of not being able to get into the fields without mud crumbling up in the tires and staying stuck the whole time,” he says.
Assiter says the wet spring caused a late start to the pumpkin planting, so he is hoping for the best this harvest season.
“The weather right now for pumpkins is very good. We need some heat for the cotton, but if it will stay in the 80s or low 90s, we will be good with the pumpkins.
It’s the busiest time of year for Assiter and his team. They are out picking as early as 7 am and working until it gets dark.
“We raise 71 types of pumpkins. We have a lot of specialty pumpkins and people like the diversity that we raise in Floydada,” he says.
Assiter says he is in ‘wholesale’ mode right now shipping pumpkins all over the map. He says people seem to want pumpkins a little earlier this year.
“Through September will be our busiest time to ship wholesale. Around the 1st of October, that will begin to slow down. As far as Assiter Punkin Ranch, we’ll start more into a retail mode,” he says.
Assiter is aiming to have his own pumpkin patch up and running by the end of the month. You can also find his pumpkins at the annual Floydada ‘Punkin Days’ celebration on Saturday, October 8th.
