Halloween haul: The farmer who grows 100,000 pumpkins

Lancashire Post

T & E Forshaw production manager Harry Forshaw takes us behind the scenes of his farm, and explains what it takes to grow your pumpkins for Halloween.

Transcript

00:00The more quirky colours they are, I think they're getting more and more popular.

00:15Even down to green ones seem to be getting more popular now.

00:21I've been growing pumpkins here for about seven years now, I think about seven years

00:26when I left school, went to college for one year and then I wanted to get involved in the business

00:32and set one side up, so I set it up here.

00:38We sow them in-house here and then we germinate them on and then we transplant them outside

00:44and then they get grown out there until usually the start of September

00:48and then we start harvesting them and bringing them into store.

00:56We sow usually May time up to June, then they get planted usually second week of June,

01:09something like that.

01:10Then they go out, usually up to September, then they come in.

01:13They do like the warm weather, so they do well off it.

01:17So we brought them in a bit sooner because you could see the weather changing.

01:21The varieties here, we've got Harvest Moon, then we go to like a smaller size variety,

01:36which is called Mystic Plus.

01:38Then we go on to the white pumpkins, which are ghosts.

01:42We do a pink variety, which is Porcelain Doll, and then we do one called Cinderella,

01:48which is like a blood orange colour.

01:50That's nice.

01:51And then we do other squashes as well.

01:55The challenge is weather-dependent.

01:59There comes a lot of wind when we're planting.

02:01That causes a problem.

02:03Her staff getting labour to come and help harvest them,

02:07because there's a lot of manual labour involved in harvesting them.

02:11We're lucky enough to have our staff on a six-month visa, so that helps.

02:17The same staff come every year.

02:19The majority come from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan.

02:30All good for eating, yeah.

02:32Anything we grow here is all good for eating.

02:34I eat it myself, yeah, yeah.

02:36And to make a bit of soup and a bit of chilli powder,

02:39a bit of pepper, yeah, it's good.

02:43It keeps increasing every year.

02:45My orders keep going up and up.

02:47I just think it's becoming like a second thing

02:51compared to Christmas kind of thing, you know.

02:53it's a big deal.

02:54It's actually something you can't do with it.

02:55It's a big deal.

02:56It's like a future.

02:57You can keep it simple.

02:58You can keep it simple.

02:59It's like you need to be, you know.

03:00So, I'm going to make a bit of a big deal.

03:01Remember, there's a complete cycle,

03:02okay?

03:03So, I think there's a bit of a big deal here.

03:04And then we'll get a bit of a big deal.

03:05We're going to make a deal.

03:06So, I think there's a big deal.

03:07Yeah, there's a lot of people here.

03:08There's a lot of people here.

03:09You can keep it.

03:10I mean, there's one of the biggest benefits.

03:12And so the ban on the fast-by- Buck,

03:13there it's a big deal.

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