The Wellesley Hills Congregational Church has hosted a New England-styled pumpkin harvest for more than two decades, a tradition featuring pimpled gourds in marbled green and sunshine gold, alongside cozy bunches of ribbed orange orbs – some tall, others stout, all plump and ready for purchase.
The tradition continued last week in Wellesley, as more than 40 good-natured volunteers gathered to unload a truckload of future jack-o-lanterns, porch decorations and pumpkin pies.
Afterward, Nancy Simons and Paul Bruchez stood on the church lawn, surveying the sea of dimpled orange.
“It’s a multi-generational event,” said Bruchez, who has volunteered at the pumpkin patch since 2003. “I don’t think there’s anything else like this in Wellesley.”
“It’s a community event…that connects new people that come into the community whether they moved from Texas or they moved from China or they moved from Ghana,” said former Wellesley Selectman Jack Morgan, a veteran pumpkin patch volunteer and former deacon and moderator at the church.
He estimated that more than half of the church volunteers at the pumpkin patch during their 3 week-run.
Several of the high school volunteers were originally just looking to complete required community service, but they fell in love with the festivities and kept coming back.
Ally Shi was one of them. She’s been volunteering for three years. “I totally think that a bunch of high schoolers, when they first started …volunteering…thought ‘Oh I’m just gonna do this for school,’” Shi said. “But, like, as I kept doing it more and more and like giving back to the community, it actually felt really amazing, and made me really happy.”
For 22 years, the pumpkin patch has been a scenic backdrop for family photos and wedding shoots, a field day for excited toddlers, a time capsule for returning buyers, and a reliable source of charitable community bonding.
Pumpkin Patch backstory
It all began with a youth pastors’ crazy idea, one that eventually gave rise to the moniker, “pumpkin church.” Today, the Wellesley Hills Congregational Church’s fundraiser is one of the most highly anticipated and loved events in town.
Laurie Otten was the first chairwoman. She visited the patch that inspired it all, the Carter Memorial Church in Needham, which gave her some idea of dos and don’ts.
She said unloading is the trickiest part.
The pumpkins used to be delivered loose in the belly of an 18-wheeler. No boxes, just hay and pumpkins stacked to the roof.
The adults couldn’t maneuver themselves to the top of the pile inside the trucks, so organizers deployed 12-year-old “pile monkeys” to send pumpkins down while offering an occasional avalanche warning.
The Hills Church used a good old-fashioned assembly line, running from inside the truck onto the lawn. Efficient, for sure, but the old way isn’t easy on today’s average body, particularly for those catching pumpkins from a 13-foot drop.
Volunteers say the last person on the truck and the first person on the ground have the worst jobs. “I managed to catch one in a way that tore a little bit in my shoulder one year,” said Otten. “So, I don’t do that anymore.”
At one point, the team cleared an enormous pile, only to reveal a carton with about 100 more small pumpkins. “It was like so depressing,” Bruchez sighed.
Soon after, a little blonde girl lifted their spirits. “‘I’ll get in,’” Bruchez remembered her calling out. She was lowered into the carton and happily went to work, giving the group enough rest to finish the job with gusto.
Bruchez also went to the Needham church to gather intel. “They had a huge group of 20-something men who were briskly unloading,” Bruchez said. “We did not have a large group of 20-something men.”
But they did have a group of geeky engineers who used their brains instead of their backs. They developed a ramp system that allowed loose pumpkins to roll from the truck to the ground.
Today, most pumpkins arrive on pallets. The church rents a forklift and hires a driver to transfer the pallets to the loading areas.
For the event’s first 10-15 years, Otten said late delivery trucks and primitive cellphones led to frayed nerves. One year, a lost driver arrived after dark, forcing volunteers to buy lights at Home Depot so they could unload pumpkins. In possibly the worst case, a driver enroute to Wellesley completely abandoned his truck load of pumpkins.
“We had no way of communicating with the driver and they had no way of communicating with us,” Otten said. “It broke down somewhere. They found it sometime later … abandoned on the side of the road. I can imagine that must’ve been a very smelly truck.”
Soon after, a new load of pumpkins arrived at the church.
This year’s delivery arrived a day early, on Monday. Volunteers arrived in the late afternoon the next day and calmly unloaded the pumpkins with practiced hands. Cardboard boxes flanked the lawn until workers pushing wheel barrels rolled the pumpkins into their final position.
“You look out here today, you see very young people and people who are not so young, but young at heart, and everybody is out here working together,” said Kristen Toffer, co-chair of the event. “Somebody told me in the church, (the event is) … like having a barn raising, everybody in the community is coming out to raise a barn.”
Volunteers described the process as “organized chaos,” but it looked like a well-oiled machine to observers.
A serious fundraiser
These pumpkins’ stories began before they were harvested in New Mexico, before they were passed hand-to-hand along a chain of volunteers in Wellesley, and long before they were purchased for decorations, or other artisanal projects. The pumpkin patch story began with a handshake sealed by trust in 1974.
The first pumpkin fundraiser was a deal between Richard and Janice Hamby who ran a three-acre pumpkin patch and a local church. The Hamby’s would supply goods for the church’s fundraiser, and they would share the proceeds. A simple deal turned into a family-run business as the Hamby’s acquired more partners. Today, they partner with more than 1,000 organizations nationwide, delivering pumpkins on consignment.
After Hurricane Hugo, the Hamby’s moved their operations to a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. In collaboration with the Navajo Nation, Pumpkin Patch Fundraisers grows 1,200 acres of pumpkins and employs over 700 Native Americans to run the operation and coordinate the harvest.
Sixty percent of the funds raised by each organization is returned to Pumpkin Patch Fundraisers and dispersed to the Indigenous community.
The Hills Church pumpkin patch fundraiser is a shared experience that reaches beyond the Wellesley community. Each pumpkin connects a farmer to a family, and the money raised connects Wellesley to the world.
Though it is not widely known, the Hills Church pumpkin patch fundraiser supports various community service operations such as disaster relief groups and Family Promise Metrowest, a non-profit that provides education, shelter, and other types of support to families in need.
This year, proceeds will support the Wellesley Food Pantry and the Hills Church Youth Service Trip.
Pastor Zach Kerzee became the director of youth ministry and congregational engagement at the Hills Church in January. He said he was excited to participate in this quintessential Hills community event and organize the youth service trip. One of his responsibilities is to rebuild the youth service trip post-Covid.
He said the service trip and the community service opportunities allow young people to be a part of the world outside of their screens. “So much of kids’ lives are through their phones,” Kerzee said. “It’s important for kids to think outside of themselves. It’s important for kids to broaden their world view.”
Next spring, a group of 6-12 graders will visit Puerto Rico. Kerzee said the goal is not to indoctrinate or impose themselves on a community, but to learn, share life experiences, and do some good along the way.
No phones are allowed on the trip, a prohibition Kerzee described as “detox.” Participating in community events gets the kids to connect with real people, he said, preparing them to meaningfully engage in their cultural exchange.
The goal of the fundraiser is not oriented around the money raised, it’s just to sell out. And they usually do. Last year, the Hills Church raised $32,000 and donated $6,600 to the youth service trip and the food pantry.
“I believe we need positive things that we can do concretely,” said Morgan. “And working at the pumpkin patch is a concrete thing you can do.”
