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 .

12 October 2022