Sonoma County pumpkin patches rebound after last fall’s wildfires

Thousands of bright orange pumpkins lie in neat rows, the bounce houses beckon and the vintage tractors stand ready to haul kids on hay rides around the 3-acre site at Punky’s Pumpkins, along Highway 101 next to the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts.

“We’re the brightest place in town,” said Morgan Gutzman, 26, who runs the family-owned, Halloween-oriented business with her father, Mike Gutzman.

The lights that keep thr pumpkin place open after dark stand out from a vantage point in the hilly Fountaingrove neighborhood to the east, she said.

The entire scene is just a year removed from the death and destruction wrought by the Tubbs wildfire. It swept overnight on Oct. 8 from Calistoga into Santa Rosa, scorching Fountaingrove and Larkfield, part of the arts center and the perimeter of Punky’s Pumpkins at the start of the one-month pumpkin sales season.

The fire destroyed two trailers loaded with about 50,000 pounds of pumpkins, tents, tools, the sales area and five new bounce houses that had been set up only two days earlier. The losses totaled nearly $200,000, Morgan Gutzman said.

It was a pivotal moment for the business started by Mike Gutzman in 1995 and which Morgan, at age 12, agreed to eventually take over. “Either we pushed through and opened or we didn’t do anything,” she said.

Option two had no chance. “My dad and I aren’t that kind of people,” Morgan said.

The business reopened last year on Oct. 19, but sales were diminished by 70 percent - a “hard hit,” she said - and the surrounding neighborhood is still largely denuded of homes, trees and families who patronized Punky’s, which Morgan said is named after her, “the original punk.”

A year later, Morgan said she’s awaiting what is typically the company’s biggest pumpkin sales weekend of all, with 13 varieties of orange pumpkins - all grown on 18 acres in Graton owned by a family friend - plus heirloom squash and gourds.

The bounce houses, hay rides and a 30-foot-tall slide are among the attractions that bring some families back several times a week. A hay bale maze has walls just 4 feet tall so parents can readily locate their children in a place for toddlers and kids up to about age 10.

A “corn pit,” with 12 tons of dry feed corn surrounded by hay bales, is among the youthful customer favorites, offering a soft, squishy play area.

Amanda Bowen, 19, who was at Punky’s on a Sonoma County Office of Education field trip, bought a 2.8-pound pumpkin.

“I like small pumpkins,” she said.

About 18 miles south on Highway 101, farmer Jim Groverman also is enjoying a rebound in his 25th year at the Petaluma Pumpkin Patch.

When last year’s wildfire threatened his Penngrove home, burning right to the fire line, the family dug with tractors, Groverman closed the pumpkin patch for a few days and took an 80 percent drop in sales the following weekend.

In 2016, he lost 11 days of good business because of early rainfall.

October has been better this year, with sunny days and warm evenings to boost sales.

“Finally, Mother Nature is being kind to us,” Groverman said, and “the economy is good. Wages are again up.”

When the pumpkin patch first opened, prominently featuring a 4-acre corn maze, the attraction clogged southbound freeway traffic at the foot of the Cotati grade, he recalled.

Now, the bottleneck occurs a bit further south, where the highway narrows from three to two lanes past the Petaluma Auto Mall, Groverman said.

This year also has been better at the Santa Rosa Pumpkin Patch on Stony Point Road, where Hannah Smith, 26, manages the family enterprise.

Sales dropped by about a third last season in the wake of the fires, cutting into what is usually a busy weekend at the 30-acre family farm, with 8 acres planted in 45 varieties of pumpkins.

On Friday, Smith said the business had sold about 75 percent of its pumpkins, but it will remain open through Halloween with an ?8-acre corn maze.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.