Andrew Faucher stands Thursday with 270 pumpkins he carved, with room in his garage for seven more on Little Street in Lewiston. He started with five carved pumpkins 15 years ago. His carvings in foam pumpkins include portraits of David Bowie, Kobe Bryant, Herman Munster and The Golden Girls. Faucher has not carved any politicians. “I leave politics out of it,” he said.  “It’s not suppose to be about nasty debates.” Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — Andrew Faucher found a way to put an end to inevitable rotting of his carefully carved pumpkins, using ones made of foam that over the past 20 years now number 270. 

“I would spend a considerable amount of time carving pumpkins,” he recalled. “It was very rewarding until they would rot. It was just disappointing that they would rot.”

Foam pumpkins were a game changer.

“I ended up stumbling across these foam pumpkins one year and saw that they were carvable, decided I’d do some research on it,” Faucher said. He was pleasantly surprised with his findings. “There was like a cult following for carving these in place of real pumpkins because they don’t rot.”

“The first year I carved five and I thought it was great. Everybody loved it. I loved the fact that year over year, everybody could see the pumpkins and they could reminisce about the designs and it wasn’t just a memory anymore,” Faucher said.

Then he began collecting his carved pumpkins. “Slowly but surely over the years, I’ve ended up adding anywhere from 10 to 20 more to the display. I added 10 this year, which got me to 270,” he said.

Carving foam pumpkins is done with the same tools as real pumpkins. However, foam is a lot more delicate.

“I use the same exact tools. There’s nothing special about those, but a real pumpkin has a thicker sidewall to it, so it’s a lot easier to carve a real pumpkin than it is to carve foam,” Faucher said. He starts with the smaller, more detailed components first, leaving the larger bits for later. “If you were to carve the big and easier section out first, the rest of that pumpkin would become extremely brittle. It could snap and break,” he said.

Foam pumpkins have gone up in price over the years, but Faucher waits for a good deal every year.

Some of Andrew Faucher’s collection of carved pumpkins are displayed Thursday in his garage on Little Street in Lewiston. They include Grandpa and Herman from the TV show “The Munsters.” Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

“When I first started carving, the pumpkins were $10 a piece. Those same pumpkins are $70 each now because of inflation and what have you,” he said. “I have not paid full price ever for the pumpkins. I will wait until after Halloween when they go on clearance.” Then, it’s a gamble, Faucher said. “I may or may not get more pumpkins year over year, but I do what I got to do. I’m not going to pay full price for them because that’s just crazy.”

Faucher gets creative with the patterns he carves.

“It’s more personal interest than anything else,” he said. “If I see one that I like and there is a series of them, I will carve (characters) from the series, like popular TV shows.” He has pumpkins for characters from “The Big Bang Theory,” “The Golden Girls,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Super Mario” and Marvel movies, among many others.

“The only things that I refrain from carving is political pumpkins, just because I don’t want to start generating personal opinions from others and having it go from being a lighthearted space to having people come with disagreements about what’s there,” Faucher said. “It’s just meant to be a positive space where people can come in, enjoy it, reflect on it and come back year after year.”

His collection will greet trick-or-treaters on Little Street just for a night until next year.

“If you’ve ever been to a bottle redemption center, they have those big clear plastic bags that they toss the cans into,” Faucher said. “I have those same exact bags and I put the pumpkins in there, typically anywhere from 10 to 12 in a bag. They end up getting stored up in our attic here at the house. After Halloween, they will get all put back in the attic.”

Some of Andrew Faucher’s collection of carved pumpkins are seen Thursday inside his garage on Little Street in Lewiston. They include portraits of The Beatles. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal