A produce auction tucked off Violet Road in Mifflinburg has quietly become one of the country's largest pumpkin marketplaces, moving roughly 6,000 bins a week to buyers who drive in from as far away as New York City and Alexandria, Virginia. The sales run every Tuesday and Thursday through the end of October, with bidders filling the lot to snap up boxes of pumpkins and fall ornamentals headed for garden centers, farmers markets and supermarkets up and down the East Coast.
According to WNEP, the Buffalo Valley Produce Auction ranks among the largest pumpkin auctions in the country, drawing people from across Pennsylvania and the East Coast who bid on boxes of pumpkins and fall ornamentals. Auction manager Neil Courtney told the station that the growing season had a bumpy start — a warm September delayed the crop — but that October weather turned ideal, leaving a substantial yield and plenty of product still available as the season winds down.
The numbers behind the lot are staggering for a small Union County operation. Each week the wholesaler at 22 Violet Road sells about 6,000 bins, each packed with anywhere from 20 to 70 pumpkins, as reported by dailyitem.com. Between 100 and 125 tractor-trailers roll through to deliver pumpkins, fall decorations and other produce every week, supplying farmers markets, garden centers and independent grocery stores the length of the East Coast.
Buyers Travel Hundreds of Miles for the Right Bin
Cary Nalls has made the trip from Alexandria, Virginia, for years to stock his retail market, and he told WNEP that buyers are hunting for the varieties and quality they want at a good price. Gregory Walsh drove up from New York City, where he buys pumpkins for pop-ups at bars and beer gardens; he said he targets specific items and judges bins on appearance and price before bidding.
WNEP reports that about 95% of the pumpkin crop sold at the auction is sourced locally, coming from within 100 miles of Mifflinburg. The sale schedule itself tells the story of the season: the auction's report of the growing cycle, per the same WNEP account, began with a slow September before the ideal weather in October produced plenty of stock heading into the final weeks of sales.
One of the Region's Biggest Pumpkin Players
The scale at Buffalo Valley stands out even against other Pennsylvania auctions built around the same autumn rush. The operation, run by Neal Courtney and his son, Ben, hit nearly 4,000 bins sold on its busiest single day in mid-September, according to Lancaster Farming. That dwarfed the roughly 1,800 bins Leola Produce Auction sold on its own busiest day that same month, with managers at Leola and Weaverland produce auctions telling the paper that wholesale pumpkin prices ran about 25% higher than the year before, with farmers also noting fewer pest problems with squash bugs, rodents and disease during the 2020 season.
Buffalo Valley's autumn auction runs from August through October and includes heirloom pumpkins. Once the pumpkin and fall ornamentals season wraps up, Buffalo Valley will transition into a greens and Christmas tree auction, according to WNEP.
A Crop That Keeps Growing Across the State
The local haul reflects a statewide boom. Pennsylvania's pumpkin production was estimated at 1.09 million hundredweight, up 19% from the prior year's estimate, with the value of that production reaching $32.0 million, a 72% jump, as reported by the Lewistown Sentinel. Harvested acreage climbed to about 6,800 acres, up 26% from the previous year, even as average yield slipped to 160 hundredweight per acre from 170.
Pennsylvania State University's extension service notes that pumpkins are grown in 66 of the state's 67 counties, spread across more than 1,102 farms, with Lancaster County leading the way with 212 pumpkin farms, followed by York County with 62 and Chester County with 53, per Penn State Extension. About 98% of the state's pumpkins are grown for the decorative market rather than processing, and Pennsylvania ranks first nationally in farm price received even though its yield per acre consistently trails other top-producing states. The extension service links Pennsylvania's access to the densely populated Northeast Corridor to its high farm prices. Illinois remains the country's top pumpkin producer by weight, at about 485 million pounds compared with Pennsylvania's 109 million, though nearly 69% of that Illinois crop is grown for canning rather than carving or display.
