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• One-on-one with with pumpkin farmer Bob Kleiss

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October is officially here, and you know what that means. No longer can we rely on the weather to keep us warm; it’s time to break out the jackets and hats. But the change of the season brings us new joys — colorful foliage, Halloween and of course, pumpkins. buzz sat down with local pumpkin farmer, Bob Kleiss, to talk about these iconic fruits of fall.

buzz: When is the typical growing season

for pumpkins?

Bob Kleiss: Well, we try to plant as early as we can, late May or early June. We do a lot of wholesale, so we start earlier than a lot of other people. We start selling early in September and go until Oct. 31, or until we run out. We do sell a few pie pumpkins after Halloween, but not too many jack-o-lanterns.

buzz: About how many pumpkins do you get out of one season?

BK: I would say around forty to fifty thousand. I think I’m going to cut back on that for next year though.

buzz: What’s the biggest pumpkin you’ve

ever grown?

BK: This year, the biggest was about 49 lbs. But in past years, the biggest was about 250 lbs and stood at about hip height. You could barely get your arms around it.

buzz: How do you harvest the pumpkins once they’re ready?

BK: All by hand. We clip them and load them into the trucks. There’s a lot more work involved with the jack-o-lantern pumpkins as opposed to the processing pumpkins (for cooking). It doesn’t matter if those get torn up, but we try to keep the others from getting banged up as best we can. Sometimes we pick all day long, usually in the morning, because it’s too wet to pick other stuff. It all depends on how much we have going out that week. Last week, we had 12,000 pumpkins going out.

buzz: Where can we find your pumpkins in

the area?

BK: IGA, Curtis Orchard (although they do grow some of their own), farmers markets in Champaign and Urbana, and we sell to quite a few other people here and there.

buzz: What’s your favorite thing about growing pumpkins?

BK: It’s fun seeing all the little kids pointing at them and seeing their faces light up. The other day I was driving through town with a truckload full, and I heard a kid yell, ‘Oh my G-d!’ The joy it brings to the kids, and we have fun out in the fields ourselves seeing how many we can get in one load. Sometimes you have to be careful with that.

buzz: How long have you been growing pumpkins, and how did you get into the business?

BK: Well, I grew up with pumpkin-growing. Myself, for at least 19 years now, but our farm has been growing them for probably about 30 years. My

father started Kleiss Produce, and he started growing pumpkins when he was seven years old, so that would have put him at about 50 years of experience. I learned everything I know from my father.

buzz: Has your farm been affected by the unusually cool summer this year?

BK: All I can say is we better not have another year like this. I thought last year was bad, but this year was worse. The only things that really looked good this year were the pumpkins. They have to be sprayed with farmicides about every week to keep the fungus from getting to them though, especially on wet years like this.

buzz: What are some benefits to buying pumpkins that are grown locally versus ones that aren’t?

BK: Well they will probably last longer, and a lot of them, you just don’t know how well they’re taken care of. They might look good today, but be flat tomorrow. The shelf life of our pumpkins varies, but we’ve kept some clear into January, and I’ve heard of some people keeping them into March or April. Temperature has a big role in that though as well.