When Donna Warner went out to harvest the crop of pumpkins at her farm, just in time for Thanksgiving, what she saw was devastating.

“I literally thought I was going to be sick,” Warner said in an interview with the CBC.

She and husband Bill own a pumpkin farm in Welland, Ont., and this year at harvest time their patch was filled with “big areas with nothing.”

In the 30 years of running the Warner Ranch and Pumpkin Farm, the Warners have never seen their field this empty.

The hot, dry summer left their 8-hectare pumpkin patch — about the size of 15 football fields – bare.

Donna Warner, owner of Warner Ranch and Pumpkin Farm, stands in her 8-hectare pumpkin field in Welland, Ont., which, she says, has yielded around 70 per cent fewer pumpkins than last year due to drought and heat. (

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