Boulder County

Hygiene porches are bigger, and so is the weather

Out past the edge of town the houses are farmhouses, the porches are full width, and the wind comes straight off the canyon mouths. We bring whole uncarved pumpkins and build at a scale that suits the property.

See packages and prices Other towns we serve

A Colorado porch pumpkin display running the length of a front walk near Hygiene.

A full width farmhouse porch swallows a small build

The older houses around Hygiene tend to have a proper porch, full width, deep, often covered and raised a couple of feet off the ground with a run of steps at one end. That is a lot of frontage to fill. Eighteen pumpkins on a porch like that looks like somebody left the shopping out. The scale that works is Full as a minimum and more often Fairy Tale, run along the base of the porch rather than piled at the door, with the bale mass carrying the line and the jumbo fruit anchoring each end. A raised porch also gives us a hard edge to build against and a shadow line to compose to, which is the easiest kind of build there is. Outbuildings, fence lines and gravel turnarounds all give us more to work with.

Staking into gravel beats weighting on a deck

Most builds in town happen on a painted deck or a concrete step, where we cannot drive anything into the ground and have to rely on weight and keying instead. Out here it is usually the opposite. Gravel, dirt, mulch or grass, and we can anchor properly. That is the main reason a Hygiene display holds better than an equivalent one in a subdivision. We stake bales through into ground, we set the heavy fruit into shallow seats rather than balancing it on a hard surface, and we build the windward side deliberately heavy. Where the display sits on a raised timber porch we go back to weight and keying, and we tuck the composition against the wall side rather than out along the open edge.

The freeze arrives earlier out here

Open ground away from the warmth of a town center cools faster overnight, and cold air drains off the foothills into the low ground along the creeks. Hygiene properties usually see a hard freeze earlier than an address in the middle of Boulder or Longmont. Mostly that is good. Cold firms the fruit up and the straw takes on a silvered look that suits a farmhouse better than fresh gold ever does. What it does mean is that a display built in mid August gets a long run of hot open sun first and then a genuine cold snap, and both of those age it. We plan for both, weighting the composition towards the tougher varieties and keeping the arrangement out of any low spot where water stands and then freezes.

What gets booked out here

Bookings out this way run larger and simpler. Fairy Tale is common because the frontages carry it, and additional hay bales get added more often than anywhere else we work, usually to build a base line along a porch or against a fence. Mums go in where there are established beds, or a pair of pots flanking the steps. The Grand Prize Pumpkin suits a farmhouse porch particularly well, because there is somewhere for it to sit and be the point of the arrangement rather than crowding everything else out. The neutral palette is rare here. It is a design made for a modern gray elevation, and against timber, brick and a working yard the traditional orange and buff mix simply looks correct.

Questions from Hygiene

Is Hygiene inside your included delivery area?

Yes. Hygiene is in the core zone along with Boulder, Niwot and the towns down on the turnpike, and there is no additional charge for the distance. The drive out is part of the package price whichever of the three packages you decide to book for the season.

Can you build on gravel or dirt instead of on a porch?

Yes, and it usually holds better. Loose ground lets us stake bales and seat the heavy fruit properly instead of relying on weight alone. We often build against a fence line, a barn wall or the base of the porch steps rather than on the decking itself.

We freeze earlier than town. How long will the pumpkins actually last?

A whole uncarved pumpkin handles frost far better than a cut one, and cold generally firms it up. Most displays out here hold their shape through the end of October without trouble. What shortens it is hot August sun on one face, and fruit left sitting in standing water.