Donate your pumpkins to an Animal Farm/Sanctuary/Rescue
Welcome to Pumpkins for Pigs!
Pumpkins For Pigs is a Nonprofit Foundation. Our mission is to reduce food waste in our communities by diverting viable foodstuffs including pumpkins to farms, animal sanctuaries, and rescues for feed or compost.
We reduce food waste one pumpkin at a time.
Donation Locations
We are expanding everyday so please visit this page often.
For a detailed listing, please select the appropriate State’s button below map or in the top menu.
Resources
Work With Your HOA
Want to make the most of your trip to the farm or sanctuary? Put up fliers in your neighborhood and create a collection point, selecting a day or two during the season to take your donated pumpkins in one trip. Its easy. Just work with your HOA to get permission to post. Talk to your neighbors and get to know them.
Get Your Farmer Involved
If you go out to the country and buy pumpkins, ask them if they will accept them back as donations at the end of the season. Often, they have pig farms they work with to take those pumpkins they didn’t sell and will accept them as part of their pick up. Or, they will know who in their farming network would accept them and you can let us know and we will add to this site!
Community Involvement & Awareness
Create fliers and post them in your local coffee shops, salons, and restaurants to get the word out that there is a better way to dispose of their pumpkins!
About Pumpkins For Pigs
How did Pumpkins for Pigs come to be?
Every year, the Winter Solstice would arrive and we would have pumpkins on the front step and a holiday wreath on the door. The pumpkins and gourds were still perfect. There had to be a better way than to throw them out. One year, while visiting my farmer for eggs, I asked if he had any ideas. He invited me to drop them off on my next visit as their pigs (and other animals) would love them. It would be a real treat for them. An idea was born. I was – and still am – positively giddy about reducing food waste. In reaching out to local farmers, I found they were trying to find ways but simply didn’t have the time to put the word out. We started with just 4 donation sites and now have nearly 600 sites in 43 states and Canada.
Through this work, we strive to build, bring together, and inspire communities to help each other through collaboration with humans and animals. We aspire to engage the hundreds of small businesses in our communities, who, through their ingenuity, creativity, and grit, provide us with amazing food, hand-made products, and so much more…
With the gracious help from a life-long friend who makes websites for a living, we now have PumpkinsForPigs.org.
From October through December, donate your non-inked/non-painted pumpkins, gourds, haybales, and so much more to your local farm, sanctuary, or rescue. (Some organizations will also take them for compost so inquire!) When you go out to purchase that perfect Christmas tree at Thanksgiving time, take your pumpkins with you and drop them off at one of the donation sites along your route. Also, when you buy your local tree, ask if they have a recycling program; some goat farms would love them for their feed.
Throughout the growing season, you are encouraged to donate backyard and community garden extras as well. In August, drop off your gently used kiddie pool at a donation site for fowl, pups, and more.
Give your pumpkins to the pigs!
Goats like them too!
