Pick a Pretty Pumpkin!
We have pumpkins!
And Southern Bell Farm pumpkins come in all sizes and shapes! We have pumpkins for eating — and pumpkins for carving — and pumpkins for painting — and pumpkins just to look at!
Take a hayride out to the pumpkin patch and wander around until you have found your favorite pumpkins to take home. We'll have a place for kids to paint their pumpkins right here on the farm, and in October we'll have a pumpkin carving contest!
Get Miz Kathy's Traditional Pumpkin Pie Recipe ... it's in Belle's Barnyard Blog, along with other great recipes!
The Jack O'Lantern Tradition: It's Irish!
Credit the Irish with putting a colorful face on Halloween. Carving jack-o'-lanterns is a Halloween custom brought to this country by Irish immigrants.
"A legend grew up about a man named Jack, who was so stingy he was not allowed into Heaven when he died," a U.S. State Department publication says. "He couldn't enter Hell, either, because he had played jokes on the devil. As a result, Jack had to walk the Earth with his lantern until Judgment Day."
The Irish began the "Jack of the Lanterns," or jack-o'lantern, tradition by slicing frightening facial features into turnips, beets or potatoes. "But when the Irish brought their customs to the United States, they carved faces on pumpkins because in the autumn they were more plentiful than turnips," the State Department says.
The practice eventually spread worldwide, becoming an enduring symbol of Halloween and the autumn harvest. Pumpkins are native to the Americas. Historians believe they were featured on the first Thanksgiving Day menu — probably cut into strips and roasted by the Indians.
Published by Dean Fosdick/Associated Press, October 23, 2004