Halloween River Harvest

image from the Keene Sentinel

The drive between the town I live in, and another town just twenty minutes south takes drivers alongside the Connecticut river. Just before a turn in the road there is a dam designed merely as a waterfall containment. Last week the area was inundated with rain; as a result debris that had been along the shore of the river was washed into the water and caught up just before the dam.

Driving along the river earlier today, I passed the waterfall area and noticed a ton of large branches, and small trees caught up in the containment system. Then I realized that, oddly, there was also a wealth of floating orange debris. Caught off guard I couldn't sort out what the orange bobbing objects could be at first.

It turned out up river the Newmont Pumpkin Farm in Vermont rests right alongside the Connecticut River. Over 100,000 pumpkins had been picked and were ready to be transported to the Keene Pumpkin Festival in Cheshire County Vermont when it started raining. In the midst of rising flood waters most of those 100,000 pumpkins were washed away. Apparently, 4000 of them washed up on one shore of the river on the New Hampshire side of the river's route. Then the rest continued to float down stream with many of them getting caught up with the dam system.

Some people have plucked pumpkins out of the river and sent money on to the Newmont Pumpkin Farm to help make up for the loss. Amazingly the farm has enough pumpkins left on field that they expect to be able to still supply the annual pumpkin festival. In the meantime, the Connecticut River is floating orange.

image from WMUR New Hampshire