Midvale • Two girls holding a teacher’s hands walked gingerly out of Jordan Valley School, toward a lawn decorated like a pumpkin patch on Wednesday morning. When they got nearer to the pumpkins, one girl skipped in place.
They, along with their classmates, excitedly picked out pumpkins that had been specifically grown for them by inmates at the Utah State Prison.
The 32 inmates involved in the prison’s Green Thumb Nursery grew 2,000 pumpkins this year, and donated two truckloads of pumpkins to special needs students at the and the Jordan Valley School in Midvale and the Kauri Sue Hamilton School in Riverton.
One preschooler smiled and clapped, shouting, “Pumpkins! Pumpkins! Pumpkins!” before picking up a small one by the stem. Another child caressed the side of a pumpkin, meticulously inspecting its texture before moving on to the next pumpkin.
School staff and staff members of the Utah Department of Corrections helped the children feel the pumpkins, weigh them and pick the perfect one.
“Happy!” shouted one girl, before pointing excitedly to a pumpkin on the ground and picking it up. “Happy,” she repeated, again pointing to the pumpkin now cradled in her arm.
The students put their pumpkins in a little red wagon that teachers wheeled back to the classrooms. Some students took their pumpkins home, others decorated theirs with paint and feathers, said Anne Clyde, the achievement coach at Jordan Valley.
Exploring pumpkin patches isn’t an opportunity the kids may get outside of the makeshift display on school’s lawn, Clyde said, as some of the kids get nervous at public pumpkin patches.
“Some of our students are very sensory-oriented, so cold can affect them, types of light, noises of the pumpkin patch,” Clyde said. “Some of the crowds are harder.”
At Kauri Sue Hamilton, school officials opted to hold the pumpkin-picking inside, on tables. The prison also gave the school several painted pumpkins to be auctioned off.
“We have very talented artists in our inmate population who painted a variety of scenes,” said Corrections spokeswoman Maria Peterson.
Inmates at the prison have been donating pumpkins to the kids through the Green Thumb Nursery for the past 21 years. The nursery is part of Utah Correctional Industries, which teaches inmates skills in 18 different programs to help them start careers when they leave the prison.
“This is really something they look forward to year-round. They put a lot of effort into picking the pumpkins that are going to go to the school, making sure they‘re just the best of the best,” Peterson said.
Every year, the horticulturists in the prison donate the pumpkins they grow to schools, children’s hospitals, a halfway house and other local organizations, according to Peterson. The remaining pumpkins go to Serving Time Cafe, the prison’s restaurant, where they are sold to the public.
“The inmates especially love seeing the results of their work,” Peterson said. “And they spend a lot of time making sure that they‘re growing the pumpkins well and they’re ready for the harvest and they look forward to it and see it as a way to give back to their communities in one of the only ways the can.”