Parades, cook-offs, carving contests mark month-long pumpkin festival in N.S.

WOLFVILLE, N.S. - Think pumpkins. Think fall.

Apart from brightly coloured leaves, there's probably nothing more iconic than those vibrant orange gourds when it comes to conjuring up images of an autumnal Canadian landscape.

They speak of spice-laden pies and soul-warming soups placed on Thanksgiving tables and jack-o'-lanterns carved for Halloween doorsteps to delight tiny trick-or-treaters.

In Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley pumpkins are the focal point of a month-long harvest festival that includes parades, cook-offs, carving, weigh-ins and even a regatta where participants race across a small lake in huge gourds.

"Harvest is the most beautiful time of the year in the valley," says festival co-founder Michael Howell.

The chef-owner of Tempest Restaurant World Cuisine in Wolfville, N.S., says the original concept for the festival was to try to extend the shoulder tourist season in an area renowned mainly for its apples.

"People have traditionally come up to pick a bushel of apples and then left, but we focused on the pumpkin, trying to get them to think outside of the box."

Howell says from a culinary point of view the pumpkin has a lot to offer, providing the means for both sweet and savoury dishes.

October means the addition of pumpkin to his menu, which currently features a savoury soup with braised pork belly.

"Because I'm very much enamoured of Italian cuisine at the moment we are working on a pumpkin ravioli," says Howell.

"We're toying with the idea of smoking the pumpkin with applewood first to imbue it with a lovely toasted flavour and then mixing it with ricotta cheese and borage leaves."

Howell says he prefers the smaller, organically grown gourds for his dishes.

"I don't know the Latin name, but around here we call them pie pumpkins. They're relatively small, but what makes them different is the flesh is thick on them and they yield more for their size."

There don't appear to be too many issues with the size and yield of the smaller, squatter cooking pumpkins this year, but the larger carving varieties have taken a hit.

"The peak growing season for those pumpkins was a bit chilly so they really didn't have a good start," says Josh Oulton of Noggins Corner Farm in Greenwich, N.S.

"They're ending up a little smaller and they were under stress so they were a little more susceptible to disease."

Pumpkin producers elsewhere in the country have also faced some challenges because of the weather. In Ontario, rain and cooler temperatures in June and July created some difficulties for pumpkin farmers, especially for those without well-drained soil, says Foodland Ontario.

"Warmer temperatures in August and September have helped to mature the pumpkin crop, but supply levels will vary from region to region in a very large province like Ontario. On average, look for pumpkins that may be somewhat larger due to the amount of rain this season," Stephen Bourne of Foodland Ontario said in an email.

Oulton says ideal growing conditions mean temperatures in the 20s from the middle of July to the end of August.

He expects a huge surge in pumpkin sales over the next couple of weeks as people begin to realize it's October and his focus now is supplying their own farm market.