Pumpkin Smash

Annual Event est 2021

Overview:
Pumpkin Smash is a post-Halloween tradition in the garden—a rowdy, joyful end-of-season gathering where neighbors come together to smash pumpkins and mark the shift from fall into winter. Equal parts composting initiative, stress release, and neighborhood fun, it’s a hands-on celebration of mess, motion, and letting things break down.

Event Description:
Each year in early November, I organize a local pumpkin pickup—driving around Somerville to collect old jack-o’-lanterns from friends, strangers, and neighbors who are ready to part ways with their porch decorations. The collection becomes a community collaboration, with dozens of pumpkins arriving in various states of collapse (but not too smushy).

In the garden, 60-80 of us gather to destroy them—stomping, swinging, and hurling them into the dirt. It’s noisy, it’s physical, and it’s incredibly satisfying. There's no wrong way to smash a pumpkin!

The smashed remains are folded into the compost system, left to process down over the winter and feed the soil for the next growing cycle; often in the spring, volunteer pumpkin plants are sprouting. It’s destruction with purpose—messy joy that turns into nourishment.