Tickets on Sale for Pumpkin Festival

Cal Poly Pomona will celebrate a milestone on Oct. 7 and 8 with its 25^th Pumpkin Festival.

The event, which will be held at the AGRIscapes Center, will feature the traditional activities of picking pumpkins out of a field, trying to solve a corn maze, petting farm animals, and riding horses.

New features at this year’s festival include hay rides and demonstrations of cow milking, blacksmithing, soap making and bee keeping. In addition, the Cal Poly Pomona Insect Fair will be part of the festival for the second consecutive year.

“The pumpkin festival is a great way to have fun with the family, but along the way, you’ll also get the opportunity to learn something about farming and where your food comes from,” says Craig Walters, the festival’s director. “Los Angeles County was the agricultural center of North America until the 1950s, and agriculture continues to be a major industry in California that offers science and technology-related careers for our students.”

The pumpkin festival’s roots date back to a small event in the early 1990s where pumpkins grown in a field on campus were sold to the public. Today, it’s a festival that draws about 50,000 people to the campus on a weekend. The Huntley College of Agriculture at Cal Poly Pomona grows some 70,000 pumpkins at AGRIscapes and Chino farmland for the event.

Festival goers can play games at student-run booths, taste fresh-squeezed orange juice from the Cal Poly Pomona Farm Store, or compete in pumpkin-pie-eating or seed-spitting contests. A Farmers Market will feature student-grown fruits and vegetables. Live musical performances also will take place during the festival, and vendors will be selling many different types of food.

Children can visit the Children’s Garden, get their faces painted, compete in a costume contest, crawl through squash tunnels or pick small pumpkins at the Kid’s Patch.

Admission is $4 for adults and $3 for children ages 2 to 12. Children under 2 are admitted free. Parking is included with the admission.

Tickets are now available for purchase online through the Pumpkin Festival website. They will also be available at the AGRIscapes office near the Farm Store starting Sept. 15, or at the gate on festival weekend. For group tickets or to purchase pumpkins in bulk, please contact agriscapesinfo@cpp.edu.  

Cal Poly Pomona students can buy tickets for $3 with student ID either at the AGRIscapes office or at the gate on festival weekend.

For those who don’t like crowds at the festival and just want to buy a pumpkin, the patch will be open from Tuesday to Sunday starting Oct. 10 through the end of the month. Admission to the patch is free during this period.

Pumpkins from the main patch are $5 any size. Pumpkins from the Kids Patch are $4.

All proceeds will help support the Huntley College of Agriculture’s farm operations, student clubs, and educational activities.