Halloween heaven for pumpkins king Henry
A teenage entrepreneur has harvested a sea of more than 5,000 bright orange pumpkins in Shropshire in time to make a bumper profit for Halloween.
Wrekin College student Henry Stanhope, 14, of Ryton Farm, in Dorrington, near Shrewsbury, planted around 5,000 pumpkins over the Jubilee weekend in June after growing them himself from seeds.
With the help of other workers on the family-run farm, the schoolboy has now helped harvest the crop ready to sell at Shawbury Garden Centre, which is owned by his aunt, Sally Davies.
Henry was up bright and early on Saturday morning to tend to his large orange and yellow vegetables which have been grown on a field at the family potato and onion farm which is owned by his 70-year-old grandfather John Cartwright.
It took Henry and his team more than six hours to harvest the whole field, with the pumpkins cut, cleaned and then boxed ready to go to the north Shropshire garden centre.
Henry's mother ,Kait Stanhope, who works in the farm office, said it had all been the youngster's idea to make a bit of extra cash in the run-up to Christmas.
She said: "Every plant had about three or four pumpkins on them and there must have been 5,000 in total with 34 big boxes of them.
"It's something he wanted to do to make his pocket money into something a bit bigger and I'm all for it as it stops him staying inside watching television."
The budding entrepreneur is also planning to leaflet the local area, encouraging people to snap up his remaining stock.
To order a pumpkin call the garden centre on (01939) 251315.
