The Very Midwestern Tradition of Pumpkin Patches

“PUMPKINS SCREAM IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT”

Did you know that Illinois is the largest producer of pumpkins in the country?  With around 90% of all pumpkins intended for commercial processing grown in the Land of Lincoln, you’d think that the University of Illinois would be less focused on corn and soy and more focused on the real money-maker, those giant orange balls with faces on them.  But then again, pumpkins are a pretty seasonal food, whereas corn is forever.

With that season of pumpkins, though, comes the annual pumpkin harvest, where everyone goes out to a random farm an hour from home and grabs assorted gourds from the ground in order to remove the fruity insides and carve them into semblances of a face.  It’s my favorite time of the year, the time when I can freely remove produce from a field without being yelled at.  But it’s occurred to me recently that not everyone’s experienced this classic form of agritourism.

I was talking to Joe and Anna from Philmont about these pumpkin patches over the summer, as well as my friend Kenny and a few other people at different times, and across these conversations I’ve realized that the idea of a pumpkin patch is a very Midwestern thing.  Maybe not the geographical Midwest, but the emotional Midwest.  Pumpkin patches show up in places from Michigan down to Tennessee and from Ohio over to Nebraska, and I’m sure there are plenty of more in other states, too. But the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that what I assumed was a country-wide cultural staple is actually a pretty niche, and perhaps rural, tradition.

I’ve gone to pumpkin patches since I was about a year old.  For a long time, my family would travel up to Michigan to see our friends from the Detroit area, and we’d take a tour of three or four different pumpkin patches, picking out pumpkins along the way.  At each of these there’d usually be a haunted house, a quaint little farm store with donuts and cider, maybe an apple orchard, and usually some sort of corn maze.  I loved these places, exploring these little farms with all their cute decorations and fall harvest spirit.  I thought everyone did it.

I’d assume there’s a pretty strong correlation between the location of pumpkin patches and farmland, so pumpkin patches are not only a very Midwestern thing, but a very rural Midwestern thing.  I grew up in the suburbs, and my family went to pumpkin patches every year, but we’d have to drive an hour or more to get to these places, out into the cornfields past the edge of suburbia.  I had never thought about it before, but there’s probably a pretty good chance that a lot of people, especially people deeper in the suburbs or far into the cities, never get to experience this kind of Midwestern tradition.  And I think that’s a damn shame, frankly. Because they’re an absolute blast.

Pumpkin patches are so much fun.  I can’t really quite define what the appeal is, but I love going to these places and getting to pick out my own pumpkin, maybe pick out a bunch of apples, too.  I can grind corn and jump on giant bouncy pillows and take tractor rides and piss my pants in terror and fall down wooden jungle gyms and get lost in miles of corn.  For me, these pumpkin patches are the quintessential tradition of fall.  They defined how I viewed the autumnal season, and they’re still the highlight of my October.  Though maybe calling them pumpkin patches is a bit misleading, since they’re mostly just regular farms that put on a Halloween costume.

According to this website that I found, there’s at least one pumpkin patch in every state, which I guess makes sense and also maybe invalidates my whole point.  But the most are still in Illinois, or at least the Midwest, that much I know.  Although I guess the whole thing makes me wonder, how many people actually do go to these pumpkin patches?  What are the demographics of pumpkin patch visitors?  Where are they from?  Where do they go? 

I wonder if pumpkin patches are a thing internationally.  Or maybe people travel to the United States in fall for the express purpose of visiting these pumpkin patches.   Probably not.  But that is the literal definition of agritourism, traveling to a farm for entertainment, and really, these pumpkin patches, apple orchards, and corn mazes are probably the most successful form of agritourism ever. Or at least the most common.  I don’t really know what point I’m trying to make here, though, besides that I love pumpkin patches and fall and spooky things.

I love the colors.  I love the ziplines that sometimes are at pumpkin patches.  I love the barns and the petting zoos.  I love the haunted houses that spring up around the pumpkin patches.  Sometimes the production value is insane.  Sometimes it’s not.  I love going out with my family and friends and getting to see all the crops and the plants and be in the plants instead of constantly surrounded by houses.  I love to walk through acres of corn that’s been mowed down into the shape of the Power Rangers.  I love it all.

I tried to look into the history of corn mazes, but I couldn’t really find anything.  All I found was that the first modern corn maze was constructed in around 1993 in Pennsylvania, which surprised the hell out of me.  I thought they’d be older than that.  Much in the same way I assumed that everyone went to these pick-your-own pumpkin patches, I guess I assumed that corn mazes had been around forever, and not just to trap the Minotaur.  But I guess not.

Pumpkin patches are weird, I guess.  It’s kind of strange for people, nay, tourists, to take interest in the origin of one specific food and not in the origin of any other.  Most people, at least people from the suburbs and cities (myself included), don’t go out and pick their own chickens to eat.  We don’t think about where the food in the super market comes from.  So why are we so interested in pumpkins at one specific time of year?  It’s the most culture that the Midwest has, I suppose, so maybe it’s that.

Maybe it is, like with other agritourism, a desire to get back to our roots, at least for people who have been so far away from literal roots for so long.  I think everyone could use that.  Everyone could use a trip to a farm like this to see their pumpkins and apples and animals growing, to see how it’s made.  Although we could probably use more trips like that all the time, not just one month out of the year.

As my favorite nature writer Aldo Leopold said, “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”  Maybe that’s what pumpkin patches are.  Until I moved to cornland, pumpkin patches were the closest I got to seeing where my food came from, save the garden that my dad grew behind our house.  It’s interesting to think that I’ve had this kind of selective vision for pumpkins all these years.  But I guess everyone’s got something like that, in one way or another.

I don’t really know.  I’m just kind of rambling at this point, and I’m not sure what my original message was anyway.  Maybe there wasn’t one, besides that I like pumpkin patches and I like going to them with friends and family and I think everyone should get a chance to visit one, even if you don’t live in the Midwest.  Especially if you don’t live in the Midwest.  But, at any rate, they’re something special for me.  They signify fall, which is my favorite season.  They’re part of the reason that fall is my favorite season.  And I love them.  Even if, as a concept, they are pretty fucking weird.

Oh, and one last thing: Jack O’lanterns come from the Celtic story about “Stingy Jack,” or Jack of the Lantern, who tricked the devil into giving him immortality, or something like that.  But because he tricked the devil, neither heaven nor hell wanted Jack, so he got stuck walking on earth for eternity.  He had to carry his soul-flame in a carved turnip, and he was forced to stalk the countryside for the rest of time.  At least, that’s what I’ve been told.  That’s why we put candles in pumpkins, as part of the Jack of the Lantern story.  That, or it’s to keep demons away.  But one thing’s for sure; Jack O’Lanterns were originally made from turnips and they are terrifying to look at.  Sleep tight.