Calling all carved pumpkins - anything goes this Saturday!
Will you be carving a pumpkin this week for Saturday's Hallowe'en? Why not give your creation a day out on Saturday and enter our competition to find the best pumpkin around! The competition is free to enter, seeks an adult and a child winner, offers Fish Supper Friday for Two as prizes and gives you the chance to display your creation alongside many others.
Pumpkins are delicious but they are great fun too. We got the idea for this year’s competition when Jane Forster, who works in the Farm Shop, last year carved a pumpkin for display which was brilliant, with seeds and pumpkin flesh spewing from its mouth and really menacing eyes. It attracted so many compliments we thought it would be great fun to ask people to bring along their own pumpkin heads so we could create a creepy carved crowd!
Carving faces into pumpkins is a Hallowe’en tradition, with the faces usually depicting demons or devils. Carving a pumpkin, often referred to as a Jack-o’-Lantern, was first associated with Hallowe’en in 1866 in North America. Lit up from inside with a candle, the name Jack-o’-Lantern is thought to originate from the phenomenon of lights flickering over peat bogs. Originally the craft of carving pumpkins was associated not with Hallowe’en but with harvest festivals.
We grow pumpkins in our Kitchen Garden and sell them in the Farm Shop but people are welcome to enter their carved pumpkin regardless of where it was bought. Anything goes; enter your pumpkins large or small, funny or scary. You could do a traditional face or perhaps carve an object or an animal. We’ll judge entrants aged 16 and under and aged 17 and over, but we only ask that children carve their pumpkin with adult supervision.
To enter, bring your carved pumpkin along between 9am and 3pm to Doddington Hall Farm Shop on Saturday 31 October. Judging is at 3pm. Entry is free. Entrants are welcome to have a look at the pumpkins growing in the Kitchen Garden (free). (You are free to take your pumpkin home afterwards from 3.30pm if you have plans for it!)
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