United States | Oh my gourd

The economics of pumpkin patches

They are pointless, lucrative and generally a force for good

Pumpkin patch attracts fall revelers in California.
Image: Getty Images
|FLORAL PARK, NEW YORK

QUEENS COUNTY farm museum is one of the few pastoral corners in New York City. It has an apiary, an orchard, livestock and, in autumn, a pumpkin patch. Parents take photos of their tykes, some dressed as pumpkins, sitting on a mound of pumpkins. Twenty-somethings, hoping not to look like pumpkins, strike poses next to hay bales and post them on Instagram. This meeting of big tech and smallholding might seem as natural as a Clarendon filter. In fact the two go together.

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Oh my gourd”

From the October 28th 2023 edition

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