Great Pumpkin

Look! Up in the sky tonight! It's a big, orange disk! And no, we haven't gone loony - just lunar. It's a total eclipse of the moon, and it will look, as though to portend the arrival of Halloween, like the Great Pumpkin. From 8:06 tonight until 2:03 a.m. tomorrow, the Earth will be in the way of the sun's rays that ordinarily strike the moon. But because the sun's red and orange rays can bend more than rays of other colors, they will still be able to reach the moon, giving it a coppery glow, says Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute.

The good news about the 1995 pumpkin crop is that the bad news isn't as bad as you might expect. Yes, the summer-long drought reduced yields in Pennsylvania and New Jersey - as it did across the nation. Pumpkins will be fewer in number, the monstrous jack o'lantern varieties will be smaller, and prices are likely to be higher. But there will be pumpkins. In fact, they began appearing in area farmers' markets and garden centers soon after Labor Day. "Normally, none would come till the 15th of September," said Herb Gebely, manager of the Kutztown Produce Auction.

Although one of the visual delights of fall is watching a child in a pumpkin patch, you don't have to be a child to enjoy an afternoon searching for the perfect pumpkin. At Johnson's Corner, a 125-acre farm and market at the corner of Church and Hartford Roads in Medford, you don't just saunter over to a pile of pumpkins, point out the one you want to a clerk and then haul it back to the car. Selecting the perfect pumpkin to be transformed into pumpkin pie or carved into a jack-o'-lantern to scare away Halloween goblins has become an event.

The lack of rain in July and August has carved a very miserable face on this year's pumpkins. They're smaller than usual. And they're far fewer. "Some growers are reporting as much as a 75 percent crop loss, some fields a total loss," William Troxell, executive secretary of the Pennsylvania Vegetable Growers Association, said in an interview. "Pumpkins are a crop that can stand a fair amount of dry weather," Troxell said. But the summer "was so severe this year that it definitely affected yields.

In the mood for a veggie burger or beefless beef stew to go? Like the new "no-no" foods - no chemicals or preservatives, no sugar or no oil, no salt or no animal products? Need a recipe for turning seaweed - now known as sea vegetables - into "Kwik Kelp Soup"? How about a DLT, made with dulce - a type of seaweed - lettuce and tomato? Well, David Rumsey has a solution. He has more than doubled the size of his Great Pumpkin natural food store and moved it to a new location - right between a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Dunkin' Donuts on West Chester's Market Street.

The first jack-o'-lantern was a turnip. The ancient Celtic custom of carving a demon's face into a hollowed turnip and lighting it from the inside with a candle came to America with the Irish in the 1840s. Turnips were in short supply in the New World - but there were plenty of pumpkins, and they were not only easier to hollow out and carve but also more decorative, and a heck of a lot more fun to harvest. As fruits of a vine, they grow above ground (no digging around in the earth)

If you are traveling through Colorado, watch what you say about the food. Cast no aspersions on the asparagus. Slander not the celery. Don't libel the lettuce. The folks who live in the Rocky Mountain State have become unfriendly to the sort of people who might ruin the reputation of a rutabaga. They have a bill, about to face its last legislative hurdle, that would make it possible to take legal action against someone who knowingly and falsely trashed the turnips. People could be sued, in the words of the bill, for disseminating "any false information which is not based on reliable scientific facts and scientific data, which the disseminator knows or should have known to be false and which casts doubt on the safety of any perishable agricultural food product to the consuming public.

Before boarding a hayride out to the pumpkin patch at Springdale Farm Market in Cherry Hill, 12-year-old Cody Phillips was poised to pick the Great Pumpkin. "I like the really big pumpkins. Those are the best ones," he said, stretching his arms bear-hug wide. Cody's sister, Sabrina, 8, quickly chimed in, "The chubby ones are better. " Their uncle, Dan McGee, just laughed as he faced the obvious: "I think I'm the one that's going to have to carry these pumpkins home. " An overcast October Saturday morning with a slight chill in the air was the perfect setting for McGee, three nephews and a niece to search for the best orange orb. "The kids love Halloween," said McGee, who lives in Magnolia.

Unless the Great Pumpkin makes a surprise appearance today, the Eighth Annual Blackwood West Pumpkin Festival is going to be a little short on the headline fruit. Ten tons of pumpkins are normally used in the festival, but the majority of this year's crop, grown on a 40-acre patch in Gloucester County, did not withstand the severe summer drought followed by the heavy rain from Hurricane Floyd. "This year, it's going to be hard to have any," Dave Chew, one of the event's organizers, said Tuesday.

Good grief, the Great Pumpkin does exist. While other gardeners were tending marigolds, gung-ho growers armed with hyperactive seeds and a fondness for fertilizer have produced giant pumpkin after giant pumpkin - shattering records as easily as teenagers smash jack-o'- lanterns. Five years ago, the world saw its first 700-pound pumpkin. Then came an 800-pounder, and this year, the 900-pound mark was pulverized. With a half-ton pumpkin now looming, we may be witnessing a golden age of giant vegetables.

NORMALLY I don't get around to writing about pumpkin beer till just about the time the Phillies collapse in the playoffs. Something about the brisk air of the changing season brings out the worst in the home team and the best in those spiced amber ales. Well, the Phils expedited matters this season, and so it seems did America's breweries. It's only mid-August, and local shelves are already filled with once-a-year pumpkin brews. This early arrival has caused consternation in some circles.

OVER THE LAST couple of weeks, I've been writing about oddball beer flavors - pizza, crème brulee, blueberry - some of it good, some not. The most frequent reaction I've gotten is a shrug of disbelief. I agree, it's hard to think of these flavors as anything more than a one-time gimmick, here today, in the recycling bin tomorrow. But be careful. One of them just might be the next Great Pumpkin. Yes, gourd help us, pumpkin beer - a style that, till 20 years ago, existed only in dusty history books.

My husband and I live in Gloucester County in a typical suburban neighborhood where most homes are on plots a half-acre of less; a full acre is considered a miniature estate. Our yard and that of a home on the next street share a fence, and our view is much like that of the other family, but in reverse. The owner of that house is a frustrated farmer who is trying to be Old MacDonald on his quarter-acre tract. Just over a month ago, this man scattered some pumpkin seeds along the fence line, and my husband and I had a good laugh at his efforts.

Before boarding a hayride out to the pumpkin patch at Springdale Farm Market in Cherry Hill, 12-year-old Cody Phillips was poised to pick the Great Pumpkin. "I like the really big pumpkins. Those are the best ones," he said, stretching his arms bear-hug wide. Cody's sister, Sabrina, 8, quickly chimed in, "The chubby ones are better. " Their uncle, Dan McGee, just laughed as he faced the obvious: "I think I'm the one that's going to have to carry these pumpkins home. " An overcast October Saturday morning with a slight chill in the air was the perfect setting for McGee, three nephews and a niece to search for the best orange orb. "The kids love Halloween," said McGee, who lives in Magnolia.

IT'S THE Great Pumpkin, Martha Stewart. Yes, the doyenne of doilies is going to get her chance to ride a giant pumpkin on a Canadian lake. We guess that after you've been in prison, your tastes change. A disappointed Stewart had announced Wednesday on her daytime show, "Martha," that Canadian immigration authorities had barred her (being an ex-con, and all) from traveling to a Nova Scotia town to film a segment on its pumpkin festival. But a Stewart spokeswoman said yesterday that Canada had flip-flopped and a permit had been granted for her visit.

Look! Up in the sky tonight! It's a big, orange disk! And no, we haven't gone loony - just lunar. It's a total eclipse of the moon, and it will look, as though to portend the arrival of Halloween, like the Great Pumpkin. From 8:06 tonight until 2:03 a.m. tomorrow, the Earth will be in the way of the sun's rays that ordinarily strike the moon. But because the sun's red and orange rays can bend more than rays of other colors, they will still be able to reach the moon, giving it a coppery glow, says Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute.

The Bucks County Council on Alcoholism's Pumpkinfest was a weekend draw in Doylestown. Held at Moravian Tile & Pottery Works, it featured the usual fare, as well as 300-pound pumpkins that were lit at dusk.

The lack of rain in July and August has carved a very miserable face on this year's pumpkins. They're smaller than usual. And they're far fewer. "Some growers are reporting as much as a 75 percent crop loss, some fields a total loss," William Troxell, executive secretary of the Pennsylvania Vegetable Growers Association, said in an interview. "Pumpkins are a crop that can stand a fair amount of dry weather," Troxell said. But the summer "was so severe this year that it definitely affected yields.

Unless the Great Pumpkin makes a surprise appearance today, the Eighth Annual Blackwood West Pumpkin Festival is going to be a little short on the headline fruit. Ten tons of pumpkins are normally used in the festival, but the majority of this year's crop, grown on a 40-acre patch in Gloucester County, did not withstand the severe summer drought followed by the heavy rain from Hurricane Floyd. "This year, it's going to be hard to have any," Dave Chew, one of the event's organizers, said Tuesday.

The good news about the 1995 pumpkin crop is that the bad news isn't as bad as you might expect. Yes, the summer-long drought reduced yields in Pennsylvania and New Jersey - as it did across the nation. Pumpkins will be fewer in number, the monstrous jack o'lantern varieties will be smaller, and prices are likely to be higher. But there will be pumpkins. In fact, they began appearing in area farmers' markets and garden centers soon after Labor Day. "Normally, none would come till the 15th of September," said Herb Gebely, manager of the Kutztown Produce Auction.