It\u2019s the great pumpkin shortage, Charlie Brown!<\/p>\n
The town of Morton, Illinois is without question the pumpkin capital of the world.\u00a0 Morton grows more pumpkins than any other place in the world. \u00a0Each September, the local Chamber of Commerce proudly rolls out the Morton pumpkin festival, which draws approximately 60,000 visitors. \u00a0This year\u2019s event featured dozens of rides and attractions, art displays, a pumpkin parade, and even – big news! – a visit from the Budweiser Clydesdales.<\/p>\n
However, the mood this year was decidedly sober. \u00a0Even a rousing musical set by the Coco Loco Band, a Jimmy Buffett cover act, couldn\u2019t raise the mood of the town or hide the obvious missing element of this year\u2019s pumpkin festival: there were hardly any pumpkins. \u00a0That\u2019s because, for the second year in a row, wet conditions caused the vast majority of Morton\u2019s pumpkin crop to die on the vine. \u00a0It\u2019s the worst pumpkin performance that the folks in Morton have ever seen.<\/p>\n
Sad news indeed, but it\u2019s just a few bad harvests, right? \u00a0Certainly nothing to be too concerned about\u2026until you realize that Morton is home to the sole pumpkin processing plant for the Libby\u2019s division of Nestle.\u00a0 And Libby\u2019s commands a ridiculous 85% share of the market for canned pumpkins and pumpkin pie filling.\u00a0 \u00a0Making the little town of Morton almost solely responsible for filling 90 million pumpkin pies each year.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t a shortage, it\u2019s a pumpkin famine.\u00a0 If you love pumpkin pie, your Thanksgiving has been, um, squashed.<\/p>\n
Just another sad item in an ongoing season of shortage.\u00a0 But cheer up, even in times like these, there are bright spots. Unusually cold weather in Washington, Michigan and New York didn\u2019t impact their crops, as many had feared.\u00a0 In fact, many areas are producing bumper harvests.\u00a0 So give a thought to the folks in Morton, and consider yourself lucky.\u00a0 You can still stuff yourself with as many apple, blueberry and cherry pies as you can eat.<\/p>\n
Happy Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s the great pumpkin shortage, Charlie Brown! The town of Morton, Illinois is without question the pumpkin capital of the world.\u00a0 Morton grows more pumpkins than any other place in the world. \u00a0Each September, the local Chamber of Commerce proudly rolls out the Morton pumpkin festival, which draws approximately 60,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[429,836,947,1000,1118],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4","tag-festival","tag-morton-illinois","tag-pie","tag-pumpkin","tag-shortage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}