The pumpkin festival may be cancelled for Farmer Copleys but the pumpkin patch is still open

Farm shops have created what have become major events but this year, as everyone knows, is a game changer.

Robert Copley who owns and runs Farmer Copley’s with his wife Heather at Ravensknowle Farm just out of Pontefract had plans for their annual Pumpkin Festival again this year, as did many of his colleagues in the Farm Retail Association, of which he is chairman.

This weekend Farmer Copley’s, farm shops and farms all around the UK will be starting to sell their crop, but largely without the usual razzmatazz that has become a part of the season.

“Through the Farm Retail Association we have been having quite a few Zoom meetings on all subjects since Covid-19,” said Robert. “At last week’s meeting there were thirty all talking pumpkins. We are all different-sized operations but we fell into two camps of those who were still going for the festival idea and those who were going for pick your own.

“At that stage we were still going to have our pumpkin festival here at Farmer Copley’s but having considered everything very carefully and morally I felt the festival just doesn’t work socially distanced and that it would be wrong for our brand. That’s one of the benefits I see of the Farm Retail Association, sharing our thoughts, that help with these kind of decisions.

“We will still have the 130,000 pumpkins we planted in April to retail and I believe many FRA members kept to their planned planting. We won’t have the Witches Kitchen marquee, anywhere for people to sit, children’s rides and live music.

“We will be keeping the educational side, our walkabout characters and Martin Wiles an ex-NFU safety adviser, who knows all there is to know about them, will be explaining the process from seed to plate.

“Pumpkin season is the fastest growing season in the UK farming calendar and every year more farms and farm shops come on board. We had 8,000 people here every day of the 17 days our festival ran last year.

“Now that we have decided on pick your own we will be open more days as I’m determined we will sell every pumpkin we’ve grown. We’ll be sanitising the wheelbarrows too.

“The big difference came when the government’s chief medical adviser, Chris Whitty, announced a second wave was coming and Boris [Johnson] said the pubs would close at 10pm. I’d also received a letter from the council over risk assessments. I thought we’d be best advised to take out all of the touch points. It made me reassess everything.

“It’s not all about the business, regardless of how many pumpkins we all have to sell, it’s about what’s right for the British public. Is it right to be holding a pumpkin festival? I don’t think it is, at least not as a full-blown thing like ours.”

Robert admits to having felt himself spiralling downwards early on in the lockdown when he was reorganising the business model, and suffering from depression over what he now describes, with a smile, as a “proper rollercoaster”.

‘I’ve had to let staff go, we’ve had staff on furlough, we’ve restructured our business at every change there has been. I was lucky that I’d been at a Great Yorkshire Show meeting just a month before Covid-19 hit where Doug Avery, a New Zealand sheep farmer, had talked about depression and the main thing I’d taken from it that had resonated was that if you start spiralling, to look at what’s upsetting you and change it. That’s what I did.

“I have gained so much from the Zoom meetings with fellow Farm Retail Association members. If farm shops have adapted then the business has really grown with them, but you do need systems and processes in place for it to work.

“Click & Collect, drive-throughs, deliveries, box schemes, contactless payments by card or phone, they have all been part of the success of most members in the FRA.

“Those that may struggle are perhaps the ones that have not embraced technology. There are still some who struggle with payment by card. Our trade has gone to 98 per cent that way.”

While pumpkins are Robert’s immediate concern, he is also fully aware that Christmas is only just around the corner. He’s not worried about the trade being there, but more about how he and his fellow FRA members can handle all of the trade properly socially distanced.

“I know it is going to be big. We’re now in a recession and the one thing people do when it has been a tough year is commit themselves to having a great Christmas. My worry is how we can get everyone through the shop, because we already have queues outside at the weekend. At Christmas you can multiply that by five times!”

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James Mitchinson