Some varieties of pumpkins smaller than usual due to this summer's weather, says Herefordshire grower
Drought status was officially declared in the West Midlands at the end of July due to the dry conditions
The prolonged warm, dry conditions experienced throughout the summer didn't make it easy again for growing pumpkins, a Herefordshire farmer has said.
Drought status was officially declared in the West Midlands back in July, with the Met Office confirming last month this summer as provisionally the warmest on record for the UK.
It follows on from the summer previous, which before this year's one came along was also declared as the warmest ever.
A lack of rainfall this year also saw the Met Office declare it as the third driest July ever for the UK.
Andy Owens has run the Pumpkin Patch on his farm in the Herefordshire village of Marden since 2021, which has 24 varieties across five acres of land that's filled with 'thousands of pumpkins'.
He's just opened up again for another year ahead of Halloween and said the weather meant the pumpkins were ready slightly earlier.
"We’re probably about two weeks ahead of where we normally are, but that's generally just due to the stress that the pumpkins have had to endure, even with us watering them across the year," he said.
"We’ve got lots and lots of big pumpkins, but what we've noticed is that there's a couple of varieties here that haven't done quite as well as they would normally do and they’re probably about 30% smaller.
"Some of them gave done as expected, some big white and orange ones though so we're not complaining."
Owens said the patch has grown and grown since it first started, and they know on a busy weekend they could potentially get '1-2,000' people visit.
He added, it's become "quite an important part" of the business, which generates an extra means of income when other parts of the farm aren't doing quite as well because of the weather, and it really helped out last year.
"For our commercial sheep enterprise, we barely made enough silage or haylage for the winter, and we knew we'd have to buy it in at a very expensive price from other parts of the country to support our sheep and to keep them going through winter because we lamb in January," he said.
"It was the income generated from the pumpkins that supported that part of the business last winter, so the income allowed us to buy in that expensive forage from South Wales for instance.
"Without this, I don't know what we would have done, so it was a real lifesaver last year for us."