To price a carving pumpkin you add up its full cost first: the seed, fertilizer and spray for the field by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the price sticker, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one pumpkin costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For an average carving pumpkin that costs $3.33 to make, a 50% margin after 3% fees means $7.09, rounded up to $7.50. The field work, planting, weeding, and hauling pumpkins to the patch, is most of a pumpkin's cost; the seed is the biggest input. A grocer's bin price is a different number, set so it still covers the full cost with something left. In the example below, an Indiana pumpkin patch prices its pumpkins and checks a grocer's offer.
The short version
- Full cost = inputs a pumpkin + your time + sticker + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Price the average pumpkin, then set sizes around it.
- Admission and the wagon ride are separate products; price them on their own.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack keeps each season's pumpkins as a lot, with what it cost. More below.
What goes into a pumpkin's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Seed, fertilizer and spray | The batch's cost ÷ pumpkins a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ pumpkins × your hourly rate |
| Price sticker | Per pumpkin |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the pumpkins you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
The patch's season is in pumpkin patch business plan, and farm stand prices in farm stand prices.
An example: an average pumpkin
Wabash Bend Pumpkin Farm, the made-up pumpkin patch near Lafayette, Indiana, I use in these examples, grows about 6,000 pumpkins on five acres:
| A five-acre field | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Seed | $1,200.00 | |
| Fertilizer | $1,500.00 | |
| Pest and disease control | $800.00 | |
| Irrigation | $600.00 | |
| A batch | $4,100.00 |
| A pumpkin | Cost |
|---|---|
| Seed, fertilizer and spray, $4,100.00 ÷ 6000 | $0.68 |
| Time, 36,000 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 6000 | $2.00 |
| Price sticker | $0.05 |
| Overhead | $0.60 |
| Full cost | $3.33 |
At a 50% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $3.33 ÷ 0.47 = $7.09, so $7.50. At $7.50 an average pumpkin, each leaves $3.94. It had been charging $7.00, which leaves $3.46. A grocer offered $3.50 a pumpkin for a bin, which leaves $0.06, almost nothing, so the patch sells it only the culls that won't sell at the patch. Small pie pumpkins and giant ones get their own prices, set around the average; picking on other crops is in u pick farm business plan.
Get the calculator
Download the pumpkin price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's inputs, amounts and costs, the pumpkins it makes, the hands-on minutes, the sticker and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator prices an average pumpkin on paper. A wet September that rots a quarter of the field, a grocer's order that takes the best ones, and sizes that sell differently change what each pumpkin really cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps each season's pumpkins as a lot, with what it cost to grow.
Inputs received. Seed, fertilizer and supplies are received with their supplier and price, so the season's cost is on record.
Each harvest a lot. Each harvest goes in as a lot of pumpkins, counted where it's kept.
Orders by customer. Retail days, wholesale orders and lots are sales orders, with the lots each one took.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| What the season cost | Receipts in a folder | Inputs received by supplier |
| Pumpkins left | Counted in the field | Stock by lot |
| Who bought what | A notebook | Sales by customer |
Receiving, lots and sales orders are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.