Another Chandler Mountain natural wonder
Story by Carol Pappas
Photography by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
She jokingly refers to herself with the moniker, “the pumpkin lady.” If someone gets lost atop Chandler Mountain and can’t find her house, just tell the neighbors you’re looking for the pumpkin lady, she said. That’s the easiest way to reach your destination point.
It’s not difficult to get the connection. From the front gate to the house’s wrap-around porch to outside structures, they are filled with pumpkin displays — a collage of colors, sizes and varieties.
Out back and down the hill a bit, you’ll find the origin of them all —13 rows — at least 50 yards long — of more than 40 kinds of pumpkins. Cinderella (pumpkin, that is) hides beneath massive green leaves and vines. So does Fairy Tale. After all, those two started it all for Melinda Smith. But there’s plenty more, and the varying colors, sizes and looks are nothing short of amazing.
This is her 14th year of growing pumpkins, a tradition that started because a friend picked up some unusual heirloom pumpkins in Georgia — Cinderella and Fairy Tale — and gave her the seeds. Cinderella gets her name from the uncanny resemblance to Cinderella’s carriage, a similarity you immediately recognize. “It’s fun to watch them grow,” Smith said.
She could grow some to 50 pounds or more, but she likes to pick them from the field herself, so she opts for smaller versions during her growing season from the end of June to late August. “I save seeds every year,” and she orders more.
Husband Phillip is a third generation commercial tomato grower, and she shares some of the land for his crop to grow hers. She started small but the harvest seems to grow bigger each year.
Take a stroll around her yard, and you’ll find a cornucopia of color. An open air shed displays all kinds of pumpkins — large and small and in between — on shelves fashioned from old wooden tomato crates of her husband’s family business. They have names like Goosebumps Super Freak because of their bumpy exterior or Peanut Pumpkins, whose bumps resemble peanut shells.
An iron chandelier hangs from the center of the shed’s ceiling, each prong supporting a tiny orange pumpkin to give the illusion of lights. Just outside, you’ll find a display of all white pumpkins, a cotton plant acting as perfect complement.
On the other side, a shelf of pumpkins are set beneath the letters f-a-l-l, spelled out in twigs against an orange block background. It all overlooks a pond and tomato fields just beyond.
A storage building nearby isn’t your typical construction either. It looks more like a miniature home, and it, too, is filled with pumpkin displays. Its features, like the semi-rusted, corrugated metal rear wall, a fireplace mantel and the wood it took to build it are items she has saved over the years. “I’m into reusing stuff. I save old wood. I might use it one day.”
When told it’s called ‘repurposing’ these days, she laughs and says, “Of course, my husband has another name for it.”
No matter what you call it, it’s a paradise of pumpkins cleverly displayed and hinting at the discriminating, designing eye of the harvester.
And each year in the fall, she shares it all — her bounty and her talent. She holds a pumpkin patch party where people can come and buy pumpkins, enjoy the outdoors, have a few refreshments and bring the kids to play among the fruits of their parents’ finds. “We have smaller pumpkins for the kids to decorate,” she said. They even have their own table.
The party seems to have grown with the pace of her crop. Her mailing list has topped the 200-mark, and she has had more than 150 attend in years past. This year is her first weekend event, which is planned for Oct. 3-4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and on Oct. 5 from noon to 2.
She is expecting a big crowd to peruse the grounds for just the right color, texture and size for seasonal decorating. And if not decorating, all the pumpkins she grows are edible, she added.
“I tell them to bring a friend,” she said. And they apparently do. Once they find the pumpkin lady, word spreads.
