If Johnny Depp ever wants to see what a carving of Jack Sparrow looks like on the front of a pumpkin, he can make his way to Davis County.
Each October, Ken Klinker of Farmington displays so many real and foam pumpkins with intricate carvings that you would have to see to believe. For the last 20 years, plenty of eyes have stopped by his front yard to see for themselves.
“It really makes me happy to see people come to the display and be surprised by what they see. There’s something for everybody, too.” Klinker said. “Patriotic symbols, Disney characters, sports logos and some optical illusions — my favorites — I have carved them all for the public to see.”
As a child raised in Wyoming and Alaska, Klinker and his family regularly went to pumpkin patches, returning home to carve their gourds and revel in their handiwork. Two decades ago, he started carving designs on pumpkins and displaying them in front of his workplaces. They were so popular he carved more and more with intricate designs, eventually mixing real pumpkins with foam pumpkins — “so I did not have to spend five or six hours carving to only throw all the pumpkins away in November,” he said.