Keenes News

“I'm not ready to run off into the forest and forfeit all of the comforts of modern life ... but I am learning to walk a little softer on the earth”

By KANDACE MCCOY kandace.mccoy@register-news.com KEENES - A local fund-raising company is going green. via Mt. Vernon Register-News

“Is he sweet or savory? The answer is both.”

Walking around the neighborhood tonight you'll see pumpkin in various forms: carved into eerie jack-o-lanterns, etched into artful decorations, painted into cartoonish spooks. via Arlington Heights Daily Herald

Sarah Talley was just a kid when she started helping her mother deliver melons from southern Indiana to grocery stores around her hometown of Keenes, Ill. via Inc. Magazine

“We'll feel the brunt of the shortage between the second and third week of October. We'll start outsourcing pumpkins (then)”

By Michael Hirtzer

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Drought and excessive heat reduced this year's pumpkin harvest, but there should be enough of the fruit for Halloween and the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday providing consumers do not mind paying a little more than last year.

"It's not hard to find pumpkins out there, but there are not a lot of pumpkins compared to most years," said Steve Bogash, a horticulture educator at Penn State University.

Extreme dryness hit much of the northern United States this summer, sapping the harvest in four of the top five pumpkin-producing states: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois. Rounding out the top five is California. Read more