By Garth Bishop
For decades, Sam Patterson’s pumpkin patch has been known throughout Pickerington as the source of many residents’ Halloween décor.
This year, it will also be known for its contributions to a worthy cause.
Patterson sells his pumpkins from his house at 443 Hill Rd. S., across the street from Pickerington High School Central and the Pickerington Public Library. They’re all grown on his farm off Basil Western Road, about three miles from his house.
For the first time this year, Patterson has added pink pumpkins to his wide selection of offerings. Seeing as pink has become the go-to color for efforts to fight breast cancer, and seeing as October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Patterson will give 25 cents for every pink pumpkin sold to the Stefanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research.
Patterson has lived in Pickerington since March 1961 and has sold produce the entire time. When he started, he was selling cabbage for five cents a head, potatoes for five cents a pound and sweet corn for 50 cents a bag.
“I’ve seen the whole town change from one little village to what it is today,” he says.
Patterson grew up on a farm, so gardening has always been in his blood. When co-workers at the Pickerington Creamery found out he was growing produce and they expressed interest, Patterson began growing items to sell.
“I used to have every vegetable you could think of,” he says.
His children used to sell the extra pumpkins and, when he saw how popular they were getting, Patterson began to make them a staple of his crop. Today, he’s known primarily for his pumpkins, and he plays up the image. For the past few years, he’s been entering a float in the Labor Day Parade that, more often than not, takes home first-place honors.
Nowadays, Patterson limits his produce sales to pumpkins, gourds, Indian corn and straw. He can’t do all the work himself anymore, but assistance from family members and local residents, including a number of students, keeps him in business.
“It’s an awful lot of work, but I enjoy every minute of it,” he says.
And he still provides plenty of options for his customers – this year, he has thousands of pumpkins in 40 different varieties for sale, from Jack Be Littles to One Too Manys, all ordered from five or six different seed catalogs. He expects the crowds to gather as they always do.
“My front yard is like Grand Central Station around here (in the fall),” Patterson says.
Though this is his first year growing pink pumpkins, Patterson usually has a few different colors on hand: white, yellow, red, even striped. He’s also growing some blue pumpkins this year – they’re not a vivid blue, but the color is still visible – and if the pink pumpkin crop doesn’t produce a sufficient number of salable items, he’ll donate some of the blue pumpkin proceeds to the Spielman fund as well.
The 79-year-old has nine surviving children, 19 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren. He’s lived in the Hill Road South house since 1988.
He spent 43 years as a public servant, 15 of them in Pickerington. He was superintendent of streets and maintenance when he retired in 1993.
Garth Bishop is editor of Pickerington Magazine. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
