Less than a week before Halloween, the final push of the pumpkin season is on, and children, families and full-grown adults were taking advantage of the abnormally warm weather yesterday to hunt for the roundest and the plumpest of the pickings.

"It's getting towards the end of the season, so a lot of what we have are deformed--pumpkins with problems-- but there are plenty of good ones left," said Matt D. Bereira, an employee of Pemberton Farms, a Porter Square establishment and the second-largest pumpkin purveyor in the area.

Business has been good over the last week, Bereira said, and if the weather holds, he anticipates high sales this weekend.

In fact, his boss, Mark J. Saidnawey, said he will likely have to put in one last order for pumpkins this season.

"It's all a guessing game," he said. "You don't want to run out, but you also don't want to have any pumpkins left over."

For shoppers yesterday afternoon, the supply-side considerations of the pumpkin industry were a distant concern. More pressing matters included minimum feasible stem length and scary-face-conducive curvature.

"This here is about as short as it can get," Cambridge resident Larry Kotin said, pointing to a pumpkin with a stem slightly more than one inch long.

His son, Jack E. Kotin, added that the surface of the pumpkin was key. "It can't have too many bumps," he said.