Minnesota Prairie Roots

FROM PUMPKIN PATCH to pop-up roadside stands and elsewhere, pumpkins are popping up everywhere just weeks away from Halloween.

I love the pops of color these seasonal stands add to the landscape, setting the mood for October and the fun festivities the month brings.

Growers gather in the pumpkins, heaping them atop wagons for ease of display and purchase.

Buying is made easy with secure drop boxes, pay on the honor system via cash, check or Venmo. I love the trust the sellers place in the buyers.

I love, too, the signage, art and seasonal decorations which draw customers to stop and shop for pumpkins and often other goods like squash and mums.

It all feels so good and earthy and connective, this buying direct from the grower who seeds, tends, harvests, markets. Locally-grown at its most basic.

I love, too, how rural pumpkin stands pop up next to cornfields and occasionally sunflower fields. Sunflowers make me smile with their bright yellow blossoms. Sort of like thousands of smiley faces beaming happiness upon the land.

All these pumpkins placed for purchase prompt memories of Halloweens past. Of pulp and seeds scooped from pumpkins. Of pumpkins carved into jack-o-lanterns with toothy grins. Of jack-o-lanterns set on front steps and candles extinguished by the wind. Of pumpkins buried in drifts of snow in the Halloween blizzard of 1991 which dropped up to three feet of snow on parts of northern Minnesota and somewhat less here in southern Minnesota, but still a 20-inch storm total.

Pumpkins represent more than a prop or seasonal decoration. They represent nostalgia, stories, the past, the present, the timelessness of tradition. Those are the reasons I can’t pass a pumpkin stand without feeling grateful, without remembering the childhood Halloween when I clamped a molded plastic gypsy mask onto my face or the Halloween I fingered cow eyeballs (really cold grapes) at a party in the basement of a veterinarian’s home or all the years I crafted Halloween costumes for my three kids.

Then there’s the year I helped my father-in-law harvest pumpkins from his muddy patch in the cold and rain so he could take them to a roadside market in central Minnesota. Because of that experience, I understand the occasional challenges of getting pumpkins from vine to sale.

I appreciate the growers who are offering all of us the beauty of autumn, the fun and fright of Halloween, and the gratitude of Thanksgiving with each pumpkin grown, picked and placed for sale at a roadside stand.

TELL ME: What does a pumpkin represent to you? Do you buy from roadside stands or elsewhere? I’d like to hear.

© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling