After moving to Alaska, Bennett McGrath found pumpkins in grocery store boxes, not the patches she remembered from growing up in Oregon. She wasn’t having it.
“Some of my fondest childhood memories are going to these pumpkin patches and riding the tractor and eating the apples and the popcorn and picking your pumpkin right from the patch,” McGrath said.
She wanted that for her kids, too. So she started a makeshift pumpkin patch right in her backyard in Petersburg, a Southeast community on Mitkof Island. Nearly a decade later, she said, it has become a “well-oiled machine” and a beloved community tradition.
Each year, she decorates her backyard with dozens of donated pumpkins. But they aren’t the only attraction. She builds a maze and a fort and even does face painting for kids.
“We have a great time. I have a great time. It satisfies me in my sense of like, okay, these kids have had a fall,” she said.
Across Alaska, residents like McGrath are finding ways to incorporate pumpkins into their fall celebrations — despite limited state-grown pumpkins and high prices for store-bought ones. From Petersburg to the North Slope, they’re making the autumn tradition their own.
McGrath said donations are what keep the Petersburg pumpkin patch going.
The local grocery store Hammer and Wikan donates thousands of dollars in supplies every year. This year, it donated 200 pumpkins, straw bales and cornstalks. Alaska Marine Lines covers all the shipping costs.
It’s a lot of work, but it’s all for the kids, McGrath said.
“Like the joy in the kids' faces, and every year when they're like, ‘You're the pumpkin patch lady,’” she said. “You have to do it again, right?”
The journey of the great pumpkin
So where do most of Alaska’s pumpkins even come from?
“The journey of a pumpkin begins in a pumpkin patch far, far away,” joked Marc Jones, vice president of merchandising for Alaska Commercial Company.
The grocery store chain supplies 38 rural communities with pumpkins grown in Washington state. Last year, AC stores shipped and sold roughly 4,000 carving pumpkins. Much like other goods coming to Alaska, the pumpkins traveled on a mix of barges, trucks and bush planes to get to communities.
“The Southeast stores, they might arrive in big totes like you often see around town here in Anchorage, but for the stores in rural Alaska, we'll have to put them in boxes and then ship them, and the bypass mail flies on airplanes,” Jones said.
Greg Dahl is the senior category manager for AC. He said for stores off the road system, it can take a few weeks for pumpkins to travel from their distribution center in Tacoma, Wash.
This year, it’s more expensive to ship pumpkins because of the war in Iran, Dahl said. Pumpkins are 30 to 40% more expensive than last year.
“Many, many times of that cost is the freight cost,” Dahl said. “Especially in the bush stores where we're shipping out to say Nuiqsut, which is our most cost prohibitive market to get to by mailing. Gosh, that's a 250% higher cost than the actual cost of pumpkins.”
Despite the higher costs, he said, communities' demand for pumpkins remains.
“It’s something that our customers, regardless of where they're at, they want to enjoy it,” Dahl said. “You know, it's a cultural event here, right? It's something that we do as Americans and Alaskans, especially with kids. We carve pumpkins, we get candy, we dress up and we do all that fun stuff.”
AC stores have their own traditions, too, he said. Many hold annual contests inviting customers to guess a pumpkin’s weight. One year, a winner from out of town had to fly his pumpkin home in a two-seater plane, Dahl said.
The only pumpkin patch in Alaska
Janet Dinwiddie is the owner of Pyrah's Pioneer Peak Farm in Palmer. Each year she grows pumpkins for her fall festival, now in its 21st year. As far as she knows, she said, Pyrah’s is the only true pumpkin patch in Alaska.
But growing pumpkins here is a gamble, she said.
“It's just a matter of whether or not you can produce it, and that's the thing. It's hard to make a contract with someone, because if I have 10,000 plants out here, each one of these averages two to three pumpkins,” Dinwiddie said. “So you're like, well, I could have 30,000 pumpkins, or I'll have 10.”
This year has been especially hard, she said, with unexpected frosts stunting the growth of all her plants. But she continues to take the risks to provide the experience of Alaska-grown pumpkins.
Dinwiddie said she started her fall festival after spending time in the Lower 48. She wanted to bring the autumn magic back home to her family farm.
The festival now brings in more than 30,000 people each year, she said.
“I love it. I love what it is. I love what it does,” Dinwiddie said. “Gives us a way to show gratitude to the community, show gratitude to God.”
The traditions formed
Farther north, in Anaktuvuk Pass, Krystal Kakinya and her mother, Lena, were recently getting ready for the community haunted house.
The village also does a costume contest every year.
“Everybody in the village dresses up, and then we judge from who's the best costume, best dress, couples, elders…everybody participates,” Krystal said.
Plus, this fall, the city is bringing in roughly 100 pumpkins for residents to decorate.
“The freight is going to get us — probably two grand just to bring them from Fairbanks to here,” Lena said.
The whole community is excited, Lena said, adding that the city mayor, Lillian Stone, is a huge supporter of community events.
“All the kids are excited. Some of them are too poor to buy. That's why she did get involved with all the holidays. To make sure all the people, all the kids get things,” Lena said.
Alaska Desk Reporter Alena Naiden contributed to this story.
