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Squash and a squeeze for Hallowe’en pumpkins

Floydada, USA

October is synonymous with one thing: Hallowe’en. And no country celebrates Hallowe’en with more gusto than the USA, who exported it to the rest of the world.

Floydada in West Texas is known as the pumpkin capital of the USA. Back in its heyday, between the 1960s and 1980s, pumpkin farming in the region yielded millions of pumpkins across 30-plus farms. Now, there are just four farmers growing pumpkins on 1,000 acres each year.

They plant pumpkin seeds in mid-May and harvest them in September, cutting them off vines up to 30-feet-long when their skins are hard enough to endure being tossed onto shipping carts. In total, pumpkins are handled an average of seven times before reaching the supermarket.