Episcopal churches host pumpkin patches to raise money, provide fun for their communities (2024)

By Melodie Woerman

Posted Oct 18, 2024

Holy Cross Church in Sugar Land, Texas, has hosted a pumpkin patch since 2007, an event that brings in people from across the community for activities as well as pumpkins. Photo: Facebook

[Episcopal News Service] More than two dozen Episcopal churches, large and small, across the United States are hosting pumpkin patches in October. Pumpkins cover church lawns not only to provide a place where parishioners and others can purchase the orange gourds for fall decorating or Halloween jack-o’-lanterns but also where their communities can come together for some fall fun.

One of those is St. Mark’s in Burlington, Massachusetts, a town of about 25,000 located northwest of Boston. Judy Walsh, the church’s outreach coordinator, told Episcopal News Service that the church relies on its community to help get its patch in place every year, all to raise money for People Helping People, an agency that runs the local food pantry and provides other needed items and services.

This year – its 11th hosting a patch – other churches that support the nonprofit sent volunteers to help unload about 1,500 pumpkins and place them on pallets on St. Mark’s lawn, aided by local high school students and some Girl Scouts.

To staff the patch, which is open every day in October from noon to 6 p.m. Eastern, requires even more volunteers. Church members sign up for a shift, along with local businesses, Rotary clubs, the high school’s National Honor Society and the town’s Historical Society. A knitting group takes a shift every Thursday, as they ring up sales and answer questions along with knitting.

“People call us the pumpkin patch church,” Walsh said.

Members of St. Mark’s in Burlington, Massachusetts, show off the church’s pumpkin patch on the church lawn. It’s the 11th year the church has hosted a pumpkin patch to raise money for a local nonprofit and connect with its community. Photo: St. Mark’s

With an average Sunday attendance of about 20 people and a part-time interim priest, St. Mark’s needs help with its patch, Walsh said, but it also welcomes the chance to include the entire community in its efforts to help those who need assistance through People Helping People. To remind them to participate, the church has a big sign advertising the patch in the center of town, and they also advertise during the annual July 4th parade and August’s Celebrate Burlington events on the town commons.

Last year, their efforts netted $5,742 for People Helping People, which Walsh said is seeing an increase in people seeking help. Burlington has a lack of affordable housing, she said, so money is tight for things like groceries and medicine.

Holy Cross in Sugar Land, Texas – a city of about 100,000 southwest of Houston — has hosted a pumpkin patch since 2007 and offers a large variety of activities along with it. What they bill as the largest pumpkin patch in Fort Bend County opened for three weekends this October starting Oct. 12. Its website promotes hayrides, a bounce house, food, a playground, a maze, a photo booth, glitter tattoos, popcorn, cotton candy and snow cones along with pumpkins. Local community groups, musicians, dance teams and others provide entertainment in a tent nearby. Some of the proceeds from those activities support local, national and international nonprofits.

Each of the three Saturdays the patch is open, the church offers a blessing of the animals at noon for those who bring their pets along to shop for pumpkins.

Many of the shoppers aren’t looking for pumpkins to carve but rather to create “pumpkin-scapes” on their doorsteps, something that’s popular in Texas, Kari Richardson, the church’s director of children’s and connections ministry, told ENS. The church offers shoppers a variety of pumpkins and gourds in varying shapes, sizes and colors, “which is one of the reasons the community comes here,” she said.

The patch also gives people an opportunity to see the church and meet some members, she said, adding, “We hope they have a good experience of the church.” The congregation numbers about 90 people each Sunday, and the church tries to contact every shopper with information about Holy Cross and an invitation to come back for worship.

Hosting a pumpkin patch is a new activity this year for St. James’ in Knoxville, Tennessee. It replaces prior fall fundraiser efforts that the church had hoped would attract people in the neighborhood but never really did, the Rev. John Mark Wiggers, St. John’s rector, told ENS.

“This really does draw in our neighbors,” he said. “We see kids with their pumpkins, and people seem really glad to get them.” They started with more than 1,000 pumpkins of all shapes and sizes, and Wiggers said he was surprised to see large carts of little pumpkins being purchased, and then the same people coming back for more.

Prissy, who lives with Kevin Jeske-Polyak, parish administrator at St. James’ in Knoxville, Tennessee, enjoys some of the smaller pumpkins in the church’s first-ever pumpkin patch. Photo: Facebook

Proceeds will help support the church’s food ministries, including daily snack bags and a biweekly food pantry. St. James’ is located just north of downtown Knoxville and counts a housing shelter, those in public housing and many unhoused people as their neighbors.

The church sees about 130 people every Sunday, and many of those parishioners are helping to staff the patch, which is open every day in October. But they also are getting volunteers from people who are part of groups that meet in the church, including several recovery groups and boards of local nonprofits.

All three churches, as well several other Episcopal church-connected patches, get their pumpkins from Pumpkin Patch Fundraisers, which is headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina. They work with almost 900 organizations, according to its website, and last year delivered 2.5 million pumpkins for fundraisers.

The company grows about 1,200 acres of pumpkins on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Farmington, New Mexico, where they employ more than 700 Navajo people to harvest pumpkins every fall. They also have a permanent year-round staff, also all Navajo.

Churches using them have no up-front costs, since they provide pumpkins on consignment. After totaling their sales, churches provide a portion of the money they earn back to the company — which Richardson said was about two-thirds of what Holy Cross collected in 2023. Unsold pumpkins don’t have to be sent back, she said, and the church is going to explore ways they might donate them to a local farmer or zoo to help feed animals.

Why pumpkins? And why in October?

Pumpkins are a type of squash that are part of the same botanical family as gourds, cucumbers and melons. According to the Blue Pumpkin Seed Company, there are more than 200 varieties of pumpkins, including those specially bred for carving, cooking or as ornamental decorations.

They have been grown in North America for centuries, and along with other gourds and other hard-skinned winter squashes, they were part of the traditional “three sisters” planting method, along with beans and corn, practiced by Indigenous people.

Today, 65-70% of the pumpkins grown in the United States are ornamental, although dozens of small farmers near Morton, Illinois, grow specialized seeds for pumpkins to be processed and canned by Libby’s.

The tradition of carving jack-o’-lanterns with scary faces originated in Ireland using turnips. When Irish immigrants began arriving in the United States in the 19th century, they discovered that the much larger pumpkins were easier to carve.

Carved turnips were part of Samhain,an ancient Celtic festival that took place from sundown on Oct. 31 through Nov. 1 to welcome in the harvest and usher in the dark half of the year. Ancient Celts believed that theveilbetween life and death was at its narrowest during this time, allowing spirits to roam freely between both realms.

In the Christian tradition, Nov. 1 is observed as All Saints Day. It is one of the seven principal feast days of The Episcopal Church and honors all saints, known and unknown. According to the “Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer” by the liturgical scholar, the late Rev. Marion Hatchett, the feast may have originated in Ireland and then spread to England and the rest of Europe.

The English called All Saints Day “All Hallows,” and the day before – Oct. 31 – was the eve of All Hallows, Hallow’eve – or today, Halloween.

The Episcopal Church calendar also includes on Nov. 2 “The Commemoration of All Faithful Departed,” as a day to remember those who have died but aren’t official saints of the church. It often is referred to as All Souls Day.

In Mexico and other parts of Latin America – and by people of those cultures in the United States and elsewhere – Nov. 1-2 is celebrated as Dia de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, in which the living and the dead are reunited in celebration. While the image of a skull often is associated with this observance, it is not directly related to Halloween.

Patches in Episcopal churches

One of the churches that regularly hosts a pumpkin patch is Grace Church in Asheville, North Carolina. While the church is open after Hurricane Helene caused extensive damage in the city and elsewhere in the region, it won’t have a patch this year. Katherine Johnson, the church’s office manager, told ENS its shipment of pumpkins was set to arrive the same weekend as the storm, so it was diverted to a fire department in Wake County. But they plan to be back in the pumpkin business again next year.

Here is a list of other churches ENS was able to identify as hosting pumpkin patches this year. Check locally to see if others are open as well.

St. Joseph’s, Lakewood, Colorado

St. Peter’s, Cheshire, Connecticut

Grace Memorial Church, Hammond, Louisiana

St. Augustine’s, Metairie, Louisiana

St. Francis’, Denham Springs, Louisiana

St. Andrew’s, New Orleans, Louisiana

St. John’s, Franklin, Massachusetts

Church of the Redeemer, Biloxi, Mississippi

Trinity, Pass Christian, Mississippi

Trinity, Newport, Rhode Island

St. George’s, Summerville, South Carolina

St. James’, Dallas Texas

St. Matthew’s, Henderson, Texas

Grace, Houston, Texas

Good Shepherd, Kingwood, Texas

St. Andrew’s, Pearland, Texas

St. Richard’s, Round Rock, Texas

St. Joseph’s, Salado, Texas

St. Margaret’s, San Antonio, Texas

Immanuel Church-on-the-Hill, Alexandria, Virginia

St. Luke’s, Alexandria, Virginia

St. Thomas’, McLean, Virginia

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.

Episcopal churches host pumpkin patches to raise money, provide fun for their communities (2024)
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