"Pumpkin picking" WTF

[HauntedGusset]

Driving home from a visit to family today there was an absolutely massive traffic jam caused by cars entering/leaving a farm shop that also has a small events centre attached. I last passed the farm shop a few weeks ago and they had some other event on with cars parked all over the field nearest the road. Anyway today the same field was covered in huge pumpkins with families trudging round in the mud "picking" them - but they didn't grow there, they can't have done as the same field was a car park last month They've just been plonked there. Someone tell me why this is a thing?

(And no, I don't have small DC anymore so I suppose I've missed this becoming popular, I was vaguely aware people pick pumpkins but imagined it to be like picking strawberries where you actually pick them fresh from the plant, not like a crapper muddier version of just buying one from Lidl!)

Clearly you only did that 10k for the ‘gram and the likes.

being sarcastic, of course. Well done you!

😆 love this....certainly give the aliens something to chuckle at!

Just get a packet of seeds, only couple of quid, get an old bin/ potato growing sack Poundland or garden centre & chuck veg waste / compost etc in . Pop the bin in the yard in garden. Seeds can germinate on window ledge in Aldi compost & yogurt pot. Loads of squash & pumpkin varieties, and very prolific too ! Then use the inside for soup & stew and kids learn useful skills for when it all goes mad max

My MIL wouldn't let DH and his brother go trick or treating because she thought it was begging. She was from a generation and class where people might actually have sent their kids out to the neighbours begging...

Argh pressed return too soon. I suppose people from a background where kids might have had to work picking veg for money would see pumpkin picking as common for the same reason

People who take their kids to pick your own pumpkins should be strung up for the 5th November and turned into pumpkin pie.

My sister goes real pumpkin picking in the US, apple picking too. But it's real. Kind of bizarre just putting them out there.

@
As the farmer above mentioned, as a Pumpkin grower, I would def NOT want children sawing through the vines!

Also, the pumpkins ripen at a very different rate and leaving them on a vine that dies after the pumpkin ripens, would lead to the pumpkin eventually rotting. Also, some older vines (ie: ones which have a pumpkin almost ripe) are RIFE for powdery mildew and if that occurs, then you need to harvest the pumpkin asap! t it will become infected too....

Oh, get off the stage. You've lost your audience.

I know a few people who went and never posted about it on social media?

Do you know anything about growing pumpkins?! They ripen at different points in the season and need to be harvested then or they rot! It's almost impossible to have them all ripe on their vines for that one/two week period for people to 'pick' 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

No it isn't! See my last two posts

Hocus pocus I turn you into pumpkin pie!!!

You got me! All the weeks training for it just so I could post a picture with my medal.

I mean who doesn't like getting up early on a Sunday morning to go and run 10km. Put myself down for a half marathon next year too, just for the gram pictures.

Bit silly really since the pictures that got taken by the official organisers are awful so I'm out there for the whole world to see 😱

I struggle massively with plants, I have 3 that I'm struggling to remember to look after, I don't wish to add a pumpkin to the ever growing list of living things I need to keep alive. It's hard enough keeping myself alive someday!

£50!! Wow, that’s expensive. We went to one on a local farm the other day and had a really lovely family day out with my 15 month old. He was thrilled to ride around in a wheelbarrow amongst all these funny orange, green and white balls, and loved getting muddy and climbing up the hay bale ‘mountain’ they’d built for kids. We paid £4.50 to enter (price per car not per person), had a delicious wood fired pizza from a van for £6 and bought one giant, one medium and one small pumpkin which came to £10. So yes, more expensive than Lidl where we normally shop but I was actually pretty impressed with a whole day out including food for ~£20. There were other local ones that were more expensive but you just shop around for value like anything else.

agree it is a totally weird concept sticking a bunch of pumpkins in a field to be “picked” but my little one had a whale of a time so we’ll be going back next year!

Having done pumpkin choosing a few times now, I’m totally over it.

the pumpkins cost about 5 x the price as Asdas . Plus it’s muddy.

pointless tbh

the worst bit is carving them: is there a market for ready carved pumpkins?

I’m certainly not against a fun family day out, just extortionate prices!!! I was told today about a place locally that’s cheap so I’ll be going there next year.

But what's wrong with supporting local farmers?

I decided when my DC were toddlers that i wanted most of the annual "traditions" we would have as a family to be inexpensive things that didn't involve massive commercialisation - nothing that involves paying entry fees, buying props, or booking tickets. Buying into all these things just means if you have a tough year & can't afford it you feel rotten like you've let down your kids.

So no pumpkin picking, no elf on a shelf, no christmas boxes, no santa grottos.

Instead

• homemade toffee at bonfire night
• we do get a pumpkin & carve it, but its a cheap supermarket one or one from our neighbours allotment and the carving is the fun bit - i surprise the kids with a new design each year.
• we have a christmas music playlist i put on in the morning straightaway on December 1st
• a special homemade Christmas biscuit recipe that we decorate ourselves
• we all go together to the local farm that grow christmas trees to choose the tree and we decorate it together
• i usually try and find out where a sally army band will be playing carols and take the kids to see!

But what's wrong with supporting local farmers?

Often its not actually farmers. Its commercial ventures who've rented a field and dumped a load of pumpkins & haystacks in it.

A farmer is someone who actually grows something or rears animals etc.... not someone who flogs pumpkins they've not grown for a huge mark up.

Novel idea: Perhaps if supermarkets paid prices for food which reflected production costs, farmers wouldn't have the need to do this

I am the target market. 100% refuse to join in with this madness. We pick a pumpkin as a family from a supermarket, we scoop out the guts as a family, carve it as a family and cook the flesh and seeds. Not one photo goes on social media and we still enjoy it and have fun.
Each to their own but I find it mind boggling why people endure it every year. Almost everyone I know who's done it, hates it and hates the cost.

Turnips are much harder to carve!

100% refuse to join in with this madness.

I didn't realise anyone was trying to force you? Who are you refusing? What moral stand is this?

Good luck making a pie out of the pumpkins grown for carving....