Pumpkin Patches
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Find Pumpkin Patches and more right here on Hauntworld.com. We have sourced out all the information to help you find the best pumpkin patchs, corn mazes, hayrides and more. Additionally we offer pumpkin carving tips and patterns for free!!! A pumpkin patch is techincally a Halloween Attraction because pumpkin patches are no longer just a field with pumpkins in them. Today pumpkin patches are attractions with corn mazes, hayrides, pony rides, straw mazes, inflatable haunted houses, as well as pumpkin everywhere for you to purchase. Pumpkin patches have now become one of the best family attractions to take your kids each and ever single October. When you are looking for a haunted house visit the front page of www.Hauntworld.com and use our map and click on the state nearest you. Many haunted attractions now feature pumpkin patches, haunted hayrides and other Halloween events. Find them all on the front page o Hauntworld.com using the interactive map. Below find articles and links to other sites to help you find what you are looking for! Find Halloween Attractions, Pumpkin patches, corn mazes and more here www.HalloweenAttractions.com Find Pumpkin Patches nationwide and by state across America www.pumpkinpatchesandmore.org This site offers the best way to find all sorts of farms across America to help you find places to pick your own pumpkins, strawberries, apples, fruit, and much more. Awesome website. http://www.pickyourown.org/ This site is another really cool website to help you find pumpkin patches nationwide http://thepumpkindirectory.com/
Pumpkin Patches Thinking outside the Haunted House I started my haunted house at the age of 15 in 1985 out of the love of Halloween. The boo business for me started out as a small haunted farm house on my parent’s farm and grew into a huge Halloween tradition in NC attracting over 45,000 visitors a season. Over the years as the demand for our haunted attraction increased I decided to look into other ways to draw visitors to the farm. In the fall of 1999 after researching various attractions we created the Maize Adventure corn maze. The corn maze grew in attendance just like the haunted attraction did to the point we needed to expand to keep the word of mouth going. We decided that we would try to sell pumpkins to our customer base just to see if they would sell. Even though I never grew a pumpkin in my life, I found out that I did not need to know. In 2005 I found a local farmer that supplied all the big grocery stores in our state and was able to purchase crates of pumpkins at wholesale from him. It is imperative that you contact a grower very early in the season to put your order in; we made our deal in June. To keep our risk low we made had an agreement where I only purchased what I could sell over the weekend. This allows us to have a low startup cost and test the market. There are many types of pumpkins available, however we found the pie pumpkin the perfect size for kids and the traditional carving pumpkin the two best sellers. We built a pumpkin house to display our pumpkins and put up signs to let all the corn maze customers know to visit the pumpkin patch on the way out. We did not advertise the pumpkin patch at all other than onsite signage. To our surprise we sold several thousand of the pumpkins. Due to the success of the 2005 season we then bundled the pumpkin patch into a combo package for our school groups in 2006. The kids that participated in the pumpkin patch combo all got to take home a small pie pumpkin. The marketing was built in automatically, when the kids took home a pumpkin the rest of the family would in turn come out to the farm to purchase the family pumpkin to crave out for the front porch.
To our amazement we turned out to be the biggest customer of our grower selling close to 20,000 pumpkins in 8 weeks. In studying the marketing success of our pumpkin sales it was clear to see the secret. Since we catered to school groups coming to the farm starting in September we could sell pumpkins one month before the general public even thought about a pumpkin. Once October arrived we already had our best sales people, the school kids, talking up the awesome looking pumpkin house one full month in advance. The sales of the pumpkins kept increasing every weekend we were open to the public up to the weekend before Halloween. On average the pumpkins cost us $1.25 each and sold for $5.00. We treated our customers to an unforgettable experience by allowing them to pick a pumpkin right off the pumpkin house. The only drawback was trying to keep the house stocked with pumpkins on Saturday afternoon. Foot traffic was a key selling point, so we created several photo opportunities for the families to take photos of the kids. We setup old John Deere tractors for kids to pretend they were driving and a cut of the American Gothic photo where kids could pop their heads through. Even simple hay bales stacked for babies to be propped up along side pumpkins was price less. With a little creativity you’ll soon find that your business is the talk of the town. Adults and children alike will be telling all their friends to go check out the most amazing pumpkin patch. Unlike the traditional pumpkin patches that you find in the parking lots of churches we reinvented the idea and made it our own. Not to mention the thousands of families that paid a visit to our farm were introduced to our haunted attraction being on the same farm. If you think about it haunted houses and pumpkins just go together anyway. Stay tuned for my more secrets in this series of “Thinking outside the Haunted House” coming soon. By: Tony Wohlgemuth President of Kersey Valley Inc. & On the web at www.kerseyvalley.com
Pumpkin Carving Tips by Hauntworld.co
Tip One: Pick a nice round pumpkin or a pumpkin with a flat side on the front. Do not start with a pumpkin that has odd shapes or is already showing signs of rotting.
Tip Two: Get rid of the pumpkin stem by cutting a wide circle around it. Now clean the pumpkins guts out. It is best to do most of this work with your hands then take an ice scream scooper to remove anything stuck to the sides.
Tip Three: Now take your Hauntworld design and tape it right to the pumpkin. Make sure the surface is dry and clean. Now you want to trace the design into the pumpkin with a pumpkin poker. Simply poke the pattern into the pumpkin by poking holes through the paper. When you remove the paper you will see the design poked into the pumpkin however make sure you keep your design handy for reference.
Tip Four: Use your pumpkin saw to start the process of carving your pumpkin. Take your time to make cuts and never use a knife to carve your pumpkin.
Tip Five: Light your pumpkin. Today Halloween stores sell all sorts of battery operated lights some that strobe and do other effects. Depending on what type of design you use will determine how much light and what type of light is required.
Tip Six: We suggest heading to your local art store, for those fine detail pumpkin carving projects. Art stores will have all sorts of carving tools for artist who normally sculpt clay or foam. These carving tools will come in handy to create the highly detailed pumpkin carvings.
Tip Seven: HAVE FUN! Take time to get your kids involved, this is a family project and what makes Halloween so much fun for most Americans.
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