With Halloween approaching, a County Durham farm is reaping the rewards of having sown a whopping 70,000 pumpkins this year.
East Grange Farm at High Shincliffe currently has a huge variety of pumpkins spread across 20 acres of space - which offers plenty choice for families preparing to make their annual Halloween lantern. Already the farm's giant pumpkin patch is attracting crowds of visitors and will continue to do so in the run-up to October 31 - or until it runs out.
The current pumpkin extravaganza follows the summer Sunflower Trail which turned adjacent fields into a blaze of yellow, and next it will be the turn of the annual Christmas tree sales. While it's a working farm, keeping a flock of ewes and growing wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape, farmer Richard Laing - whose family has farmed there for decades and in the Durham area for generations - finds that diversification helps keep the business viable.
