Students pick pumpkins in the dark. Courtesy | Mindy Poole
When freshman Rowan Woodard met senior Sam Montone in the Grewcock Student Union last week, he did not expect to be paid for picking pumpkins for three hours the next day.
“Sam came up to me while I was sitting in the student union, and he was like, ‘So there’s a farm where they’re picking pumpkins, and you get paid $20 an hour,’” Woodard said. “So after my 1 p.m. class, I jumped in this truck, and we went to go pick pumpkins.”
Woodard and Montone went to the Poole Farm, a farm started 18 years ago by Health Services Office Manager Mindy Poole and her husband Dan. After the couple married in 1997, they bought five acres of land. They have purchased the surrounding land over the last 20 years. With the addition of a new field last fall, the Pooles wanted to try something different.
“We have a few Amish neighbors that grow pumpkins and we talked to them. They were very helpful in getting us started,” Poole said in an email. “We planted about 10 acres of pumpkins this spring and are loading our sixth and seventh semi loads this week.”
Woodard said the pumpkin fields were hilly, with stretches of mud and pumpkins “popping up in no particular order.”
“What we did is we went over to a pumpkin, twisted it off the line, and moved it into a pile, so the tractor can come by, and we can efficiently move it into the tractor,” Woodard said. “We had one guy going around with clippers just chopping pumpkins off the vine, and then the rest of us would pick the pumpkins off and clean them.”
Woodard said the farm sent some pumpkins to Walmart. The store required that the pumpkins be clean, have living stems of a certain length, and could not be bigger than basketballs.
“Apparently, Walmart is pretty picky about the pumpkins that they want,” Woodard said. “It’s like the classic ground orange pumpkin — easily carveable.”
Woodard said over the course of three hours, he and five other workers packed one and a half semitrailers full of pumpkins, working toward a goal of 5,000 packed pumpkins by Thursday.
Poole said it takes 60 large pallet boxes of pumpkins to load one semitrailer. Each pumpkin is then stickered with the broker’s label and stacked two boxes high in the barn to wait for the semitrailer.
“When the semi pulls into the driveway, we have to be ready to move,” Poole said. “Dan uses our skid steer to put them in the back of the semi and our son, Reece, uses a pallet jack to push them to the front.”
After each box received another label, Poole said two semitrailer loads had gone to Aldi with 30 pumpkins in each box and to Walmart with 40 pumpkins in each box. She credited her family and friends, Hillsdale College students, and family business Poole Construction LLC’s crew for the work.
Point Rental and Sales on Beck Road have also sold pumpkins for the Pooles.
“We have handled between 15,000 and 20,000 pumpkins in the last few weeks,” Poole said.
Poole said with students’ busy schedules, pumpkin picking often happens in the dark, lit only by tractor lights, truck lights, headlamps, and battery-powered lights.
“There was always a lot of chatter over the sound of motors running. We think this is a great thing to do with our kids,” Poole said. “It’s a fun time spent together.”
Montone was previously on call at the Poole farm for pumpkin harvesting and answered Dan Poole’s call to fill some large orders over homecoming week.
“People have been working at all hours of the day, often 7 a.m. till well after sunset,” Montone said in an email. “It’s pretty cool to be picking and cleaning pumpkins by the headlights of a tractor when you can also see the Milky Way above you. The field has great views of the stars away from light pollution.”
Montone said he began to work as the point of contact between the Pooles, who inform him of orders and how much help they need, and the college students, who work around fragmented schedules and frequently need a ride to and from the fields. He now operates a “Pumpkin Harvest” GroupMe with around 60 students.
“The Pooles are great people, and it’s been a blast helping them out,” Montone said. “You’ll remember it better than any two hours of homework.”
Montone said the outside air is a great break from schoolwork.
“Prioritizing everything that goes on in college is difficult for some, but more students should make time in their schedules to get out of the classroom and work with their hands, especially when it’s outdoors and helping other people,” Montone said.
Andrew VanDevere ’26, who was in town while Montone was recruiting pumpkin pickers, was one of those who offered to help.
“I really like just being outside, working alongside friends, doing a fall activity and getting paid to have fun,” VanDevere said in an email. “It’s a ton of fun and you won’t regret it.”
Poole said she and her husband are grateful for the help of the students.
“It’s something we can pass down. It will make people happy and give them a chance to see God’s handywork,” Poole said. “We may plant pumpkins again next year or we may come up with some other crazy idea.”
