Family’s crop taken by pumpkin thieves

A fifth-generation farm family suffered a “complete, total loss” after thousands of pumpkins were stolen from their south Arkansas fields.

The theft happened between Monday and Thursday last week at Hamilton Farms in Bradley County, according to Steele Hamilton, a member of the family operating the farm. Hamilton estimates there were between 2,000 to 4,000 pumpkins spread across an 8-acre field.

Only about 300 pumpkins remain, he said.

Hamilton said his father discovered the loss when pickers came to get the pumpkins Thursday and reported them missing.

The family tried and failed to grow pumpkins for two years before this year’s successful crop, Hamilton said.

“You get excited you finally achieved something that you worked hard for, especially three years of that, and somebody takes it from you,” he said. “You don’t just break even. You just completely lose.”

At a retail price of $4 per pumpkin, Hamilton estimates the theft cost the farm between $8,000 and $16,000. The thieves likely drove in with no lights under the full moon with a group of pickers, the farmer said, adding a mud hole in the road would have prevented them from using trailers or large vehicles.

Hamilton said he doesn’t have any guesses as to how many truckloads the thieves would have taken out, though he said his father has loaded 150 pumpkins in a truck at one time.

At that rate, thieves using trucks would have had to haul more than a dozen truckloads.

Hamilton said the people who took the pumpkins probably sold them to a warehouse.