YELLOW SPRINGS — It is Fall season in the Miami Valley, and the first thing people think of is pumpkin picking!
Young’s Jersey Dairy has plenty of gourds up for grabs, and much like everything else, the price for pumpkins has steadily climbed over the last several years.
News Center 7’s Taylor Robertson stopped by Young’s, where she looked at just how much pumpkin prices have gone up.
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There is lots of fall fun going on at Young’s Dairy, including wagon rides, animals and all kinds of pumpkin or fall-flavored foods.
Of course, the pumpkin patch is where people get to pick their own pumpkins.
“Fall is the time to be at Young’s, it’s our September and October where we make our year,” said John Young, CEO of Young’s Jersey Dairy.
Young’s family has owned Young’s Dairy since 1869, and he is the CEO.
Pumpkin picking has been a fan favorite since they started it.
Over the last several years, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) said they’ve slowly gotten more expensive.
In 2020, the USDA said the price for a pumpkin was about $4.00. In 2023, that number climbed to around $5.50, and in 2026 the prices are on the higher end of $6.20.
At Young’s, a large pre-picked pumpkin is $4.00 and smaller pumpkins are less than $3.00.
“The thing is, I keep telling our farmers that we’re probably pricing them a little bit too low because they keep saying, ‘this is amazing like I spent $200 at X, Y, Z place last year,’” said the CEO.
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Young said they grow most of their own pumpkins and get the rest from other local farmers.
The USDA said one of the reasons we’re seeing pumpkin prices increase is because of the weather.
The heat spikes or severe late summer rains can impact their growth.
“I would say that this year, and actually the past couple years, it’s been weird growing years. So, it kind of depends on the weather of the locality and how the pumpkin market’s going to do,” Young said. “So, we had lots of rain all summer and early fall, so our pumpkins had plenty of room to grow. But even then, we had one acre over here that was completely underwater and it didn’t even flower, let alone grow the pumpkins,” said Young.
Young said even missing out on one acre of pumpkins, and they still have plenty up for grabs.
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