Missing Pumpkin Patch Leaves Hole on Solano

For decades, Albany residents have come to expect the to set up in early October on Solano Avenue just west of Masonic. 

This year, a number of you noticed a glaring gap on the avenue, and wrote to us wondering . 

We caught up with , lifelong Albany resident, earlier this week. Anderson ran the Pumpkin Patch for 11 years; it had been on the avenue for more than four decades, he estimated.

Anderson said he decided not to open the Patch this year after losing $1,400 on the endeavor in 2010.

"It's just competition," he said. "Safeway and Lucky's, they offer two for one, and that just kills the business."

In the past, the pop-up market offered a holiday destination for school trips, he said. Albany kids would spend half the day, walking to the Patch, getting their photos taken and picking out pumpkins. 

For the past few years, Anderson said he worked with the city and the to offer a there.

"People would sit in the hay. We'd serve popcorn," he said. "None of that's going to happen this year."

Two years ago, he said, the Pumpkin Patch just barely broke even. Then last year, he couldn't keep up. The cost of labor, fencing, lighting and the operator's hut outpaced pumpkin sales.

Anderson said he'd gotten at least 20 phone calls from people wondering: Where is the Pumpkin Patch? Many others, seeing him around town, had the same question. One woman, whom he ran into at Safeway with 10 pumpkins, asked: "Ray, what happened?"

It's simple economics, he said.

"I pay the same price for the pumpkins as Safeway and Lucky," he told her. "They pay the same amount, but they lower the price to get people in the door, so they come in and buy other products. They're operating at a loss."

Anderson said he used to provide 10 wagons at his Patch for the kids. He made a pirate boat out of a rowboat. He had tiny peewee pumpkins for the children, and the jumbo variety for college students (who often stock them for parties, he added).

"One time, I had a real coffin in there. People asked me why, and I told them: 'I got a good price! It's only been used one time.'" As Anderson tells it, a family bought it from a funeral home and, once the body was placed inside, they realized they didn't like the color. At that point, he said, it couldn't be sold to another family, so he bought it to set the mood in the Pumpkin Patch.

Anderson also runs a Christmas tree lot out of the same property, which he leases from the landowner, typically from September through December. (Christmas trees will be available beginning Nov. 25, he said.)

He added that he hadn't wanted to keep the Pumpkin Patch, which he described as "a local, homegrown effort," closed.

"It was a very hard decision," he said. "It's been a tradition. I believe in traditions. If I had just broke even... but $1,400 was a lot to lose last year."

He continued: "It's unfortunate. The big guys won this time. The little guy didn't win. But maybe next year we'll be back."

Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, call editor Emilie Raguso at 510-459-8325 or email her at emilier@patch.com.