Four years ago, Stetson Shirky bought a 54-acre farm southwest of Clinton, on SW Hwy. T, mainly for a hunting property. He moved to Henry County from Clifton City, a small town on the Katy Trail between Sedalia and Booneville.
His father, Peter Shirky, has a farm in Clifton City, where he grows a small patch of pumpkins every year to give away to friends and family for Halloween.
So his first year in Henry County, Stetson took half an acre of his farm and grew 100 pumpkins to share with friends. The next year, Stetson planted 10 to 15 varies of pumpkins and gourds, and decided to sell some to recoup his investment.
Every year, the pumpkin patch keeps getting bigger, he said, in order to have some to give away. Last June, Stetson planted 2,500 seeds, spent a month replanting, and has about 2,000 plants consisting of 32 varieties of pumpkins and decorative gourds in a variety of shapes and colors. The large-leafed vines fill the two acres next to his house.
He tried to cut back on the varieties to keep things simple, he said.
“I keep getting carried away looking at seed catalogs,” he said.
He’s given away 100 pumpkins this year, he said, and sells them to the public who visit the pumpkin patch on weekends and weeknights. In the past, people heard about the pumpkin patch by word of mouth, but this year, he has a Facebook, Shirky Pumpkin Co.
“There’s been a ton of interest,” he said.
He also sells his produce at a few fall festivals, and last year, sold 400 gourds to Sherry Himes at Green Streets Market.
When asked about the cost of growing a pumpkin patch, Stetson says it’s not a whole lot if you don’t count labor. In past years, he planted the patch by hand, after preparing the soil in hills, then replanted when the seeds didn’t all germinate. Good friends helped, he said, as did his partner, Jenny Bruce.
That first year, he watered the hills by hand, but two years ago, invested in drip-tape irrigation in all the rows.
“All I have to do is turn on the tap,” he said. “It’s saved me a lot of hours.”
To help the farm pay for itself, Stetson raises 30 Katadhin hair sheep on the acreage, which he continues to clean up and fence. He works as a lineman at Osage Valley Electric Co-op.
“It supports my pumpkin habit,” he said of his day job.
So in the evenings after work, he’s out in the field, cutting the pumpkins that are ripe and loading them into the bed of his red pick-up. He’s already harvested 500 pumpkins this year, he said, but still has lots on the vine. The trick to growing a pumpkin patch is timing the planting so that the pumpkins ripen in October. The longer they stay on the vine, the better.
He usually plants in mid-to-late June, he said, but it’s been a weird year, a terrible year for crops, referring to the intense heat.
“The planting stage was all over the place,” he said.
Another hurdle in a drought year: voles bit off corners of the seeds and sucked out the moisture. He solved the problem by sprinkling a sulfur repellent on the field. To help the soil hold moisture, he drilled in oats, burned them off and tilled the ashes into the soil.
Stetson said he uses an attachment on his tractor to plant pumpkin seeds. He and Jenny weeded by hand once this year, he said, after the leafy vines grew large enough to “canopy over,” which deters weeds. Three -year-old Gwenna supervised.
Up in Clifton City, his father still plants a pumpkin patch, Stetson said, distributing pumpkins to extended family at a harvest celebration.
“He has a fall cook-out,” Stetson said. “He invites all the cousins.”