“We’ve been doing it about 45 years since we started it,” Worden township resident Jerry Micke says of the annual fall pumpkin, gourd, and squash sale that he and his family host each year. “We have 52 different kinds.” Listed on the Clark County Harvest Moon Fall Tour, in which locals are invited to self-tour brochure-listed businesses and explore the area, the company name for the Micke operation itself is “Pumpkins, Etc.,” with mums (a type of flower) also being offered, although not planted by them. Now reaching its peak, the Harvest Moon Fall Tour is set to run through October 31, as sponsored by the Clark County Economic Development and Tourism Bureau, with an office in Loyal.

Among the many different offerings from Pumpkins Etc. are those in white, brown, tan, “and of course the orange ones,” Micke said. With eight to ten different kinds of gourds and six different kinds of squash, the long-running annual fall sale run by the Micke family began rather humbly, when a daughter wanted to sell some pumpkins out on the lawn. Growing from there, preparations for the fall sale now encompass some five acres of plantings with an investment of $1,900 in seed this year alone. Micke filled us in on some more details.

“We have to buy new seed ever year because otherwise they’ll cross pollinate,” he said of the many different squash and pumpkins for sale. Sharing a common plant family name (this being ‘Cucurbitaceae’) but with subtle differences existing among them, the 8,000 or so pumpkins, squash and gourds planted by Pumpkins, Etc. are part of a rather detailoriented farming operation. Included in it is the laying down of 15,000 feet worth of plastic complete with waterlines, followed by the making of 8,000 holes of cookie cutter size in this plastic to plant each seed, a task stretching from late April into late May. With the fall harvest and sale arriving later in the year, small pumpkins are generally sold three for a dollar, while the larger offerings on hand are eight dollars a piece. With the end of October now fast approaching, time is of the essence.

“It’s pretty well done,” Micke said of the annual fall harvest sale this year. “Almost out of stock.” Buying approximately 400 extra squash and pumpkins just to meet local demand, Pumpkins Etc. also buys and resells mums, a type of flower. As to the Micke operation on County N south between Stanley and Thorp more generally, harvest festival items aren’t the only product.

“It’s a regular farm,” he says of the Micke Farm east of Copenhaver, “but I rent it out now.” A widower for many years since his wife Jan passed away and now retired, Micke still hopes to pass the growing tradition on in the area, being ever mindful of customers and their needs.

“How do you quit?” he asked recently. “People come to rely on you.”

Photo by Joseph Back.