Pumpkin farmer helps churches harvest fall bounty

While some Christians avoid Halloween with its images of devils, death, and destruction, some churches count on Halloween—or at least the pumpkins sold at Halloween time—to fund operations throughout the year.

St. Matthew United Methodist Church in Greenville, S.C., has hosted a pumpkin patch for the last 30 years.

The proceeds from the pumpkin sales benefit the church’s youth missions program. Last year, the patch brought in more than $30,000.

“I’m a huge fan of tradition, and I’ve done this for so many years, I look forward to it. There’s nostalgia,” said Wil Woodward, who has been a St. Matthew member since he was a child.

The St. Matthew pumpkin patch is next to a YMCA on a busy road near downtown Greenville. On a recent sunny Sunday afternoon, young families walked through the patch as teens and parents from the church helped unload hundreds of pumpkins from a tractor-trailer. Those pumpkins traveled nearly 2,000 miles from a farm in Farmington, N.M.

How did a church in Greenville, S.C., hook up with a pumpkin farm in New Mexico?

It began in 1974 with Richard Hamby, a pumpkin farmer in Greensboro, N.C. He had the idea to partner with a nearby church. He supplied the pumpkins at no cost for the church to sell, and they split the profits.

That’s still the business plan, but now it’s called Pumpkin Patch Fundraisers. After Hurricane Hugo severely damaged the Greensboro farm in 1989, the Hambys relocated to a Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico. John Hamby, Richard Hamby’s son, heads the operation. He said the move out West was good for business and good for the people in the area.

“We have 600 workers,” Hamby said. “The town has a lot of unemployment, and we are able to provide jobs for American and Native-American workers.”

The Hambys call the model a consignment pumpkin farm. They send the pumpkins to more than 1,100 churches and other nonprofit organizations across the United States at no cost. Everything is included—even shipping, replacements for damaged pumpkins, and, this year, the cost of pumpkins floating away in places like South Carolina and Florida after Hurricane Matthew.

The Hambys make money at the end of pumpkin season when the farm splits the proceeds 40-60 with the nonprofits.

The amount of pumpkins leaving the New Mexico farm every year varies depending on how many truckloads the organizations order. On average, a full truck holds about 2,500 pumpkins.

Prime pumpkin-selling season begins around the last week of September and lasts until the end of October. With Halloween decorations seeming to go up earlier every year, sales are growing.

“We’ve grown every year over the past 10 years. People are buying pumpkins earlier, which is actually better for pumpkins, higher quality pumpkins,” Hamby said.

Many churches donate their leftover pumpkins to soup kitchens, while others send them to zoos or animal farmers.

As the season draws to a close, the Hambys and churches are starting to look to next year. Some customers place orders for pumpkins as early as December, and St. Matthews will be one of them.

Listen to Kristen Eicher’s report on church pumpkin patches on the Oct. 27, 2016, episode of The World and Everything in It.