Farmer Focus: Pumpkins draw visitors in their thousands

Historically, October would be a quieter month, before the winter routine begins.

However, having diversified into pumpkin growing five years ago, the “quiet season” has become one of our busiest.

Our farm has hosted more than 11,000 visitors this year between summer sunflowers and pumpkin-picking events in October.

See also: Livestock soils nearing maximum carbon, Scottish study suggests

About the author

David Girvan

Livestock Farmer Focus writer David Girvan and family run a 140-cow Stabiliser herd and wool-shedding crossbred ewes on a 3,000ha upland farm west of Inverness. Finished stock are sent to Woodheads. Diversifications include pumpkin picking, wind turbines and a biomass boiler.

Read more articles by David Girvan

This year we grew more than 7,000 pumpkins and opened the farm to the public in the October school holidays.

Parking is our main restriction to capacity at this time of year. High numbers of cars in grass fields in October is never a good idea. 

Local food and drinks vendors attend the events, and we always have several activities, including a home-made barrel train for rides, to entertain the families.

Each year we try to add in a few new things to keep it fresh for families who have made it an annual tradition. 

On the cattle front, it was my aim to sell most of our 18-month-old steers without feeding any concentrate.

My plan was to feed them silage and draff in their first winter as weaned calves, then rotationally graze them this past summer, on the best grass. 

I had hoped this would mean that most of them would be away by now. Just over half have gone so far.

Of these, half have gone off without concentrate, and the others were fed barley at grass for a month before slaughter. All were sold deadweight to Morrisons.

The remaining cattle are now on a silage-based diet with barley and oats, and I hope they will be off in the next few months.

Things don’t always go to plan – however, the benefits of rotationally grazing this class of stock are huge.

In the future, I’m confident I should be able to get the majority away without concentrate.

I just need to pay a bit more attention to the rotational grazing system, to enable them to get the best of what our grass has to offer.

Last week, I took a day off farm to deliver a bull to a farm down in Grantown-on-Spey. I always enjoy getting out and having a look at what all the other farms are up to.