600 pumpkins stolen from Calverton farm

Talk about U-pick.

Riverhead Town police are searching for the thieves who stole more than 600 pumpkins from an East End farm last week.

The pumpkins -- worth a total of $4,200 -- went missing from Rottkamp's Fox Hollow Farm in Calverton sometime before Monday afternoon, Riverhead police said. The theft, reported on Sept. 30, occurred between Sept. 27 and Sept. 30.

Lolly Rottkamp, who owns the farm with her son, said there had been a string of such thefts recently from farm stands in the area. "It's just an unfortunate situation," she said. "A lot of other stands have had robberies also."

"Somebody's on a rampage," she said.

The Rottkamp family has owned the 250-acre farm on Sound Avenue since 1967.

The thieves did not damage the farm's property, Rottkamp said. But they appeared to have been familiar with it.

The stems of all their pumpkins had just been cut off, but they had yet to be gathered.

"They [the pumpkins] were lying in the field but had things growing in front of them to kind of hide them from the road," she said.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Riverhead police department, 631-727-4500.