The big orange-yellow buses are stacked along the gravel road. Hordes of little children, burdened with backpacks and jackets, wait in line. What are they waiting to see?

Farm animals. Hay wagons. Tractors and pumpkins. It’s all part of the “agri-tainment” presented by our neighbors at The Hunt Club Farm, THE place to be for Halloween. It feels as if every schoolchild, teacher and family from Hampton Roads makes a pilgrimage here every October. After sunset, it’s the teens-and-up crowd seeking the thrills of a nighttime walk in fields full of fake-bloody actors.

In our society of malls and video games, the outdoor world has become just another form of entertainment. Fields and trees are merely settings for animals to prance about. Pumpkins appear, fully grown, carried out of tractor trailers from out of town, set up in an open field so the kiddies can go “pumpkin picking.” Nobody has to cut the stem from the plant.

A few Halloweens ago when my husband was working on land along the hay wagon trail, a parent on the hayride, who was pointing out farm animals to their child, like, “Look honey, it’s a HORSIE!” spotted John actually added, “Look honey, It’s a FARMER!”

But I hate to disparage a quaint tradition that children of course adore. After all, it’s great fun to carve a pumpkin. I did it in my childhood. I did it with my now grown daughter, when Halloween in Colonial Place was as innocent as a Norman Rockwell painting.

We forget, though, that after all pumpkins are really just vegetables…food. How many families will actually dine on that jack o’ lantern? And how many farmers and field hands worked to make sure they would make it to October? We forget, or might not realize, that it takes a long time to grow a pumpkin. It takes determination, commitment, passion, and sweat. But then, come October, they’re all cut and piled for delivery. When something you do with all your heart turns into a commodity, it’s a little scary.

Vegetable growers on small farms get relatively little return for the hours and years they work, learning how to create compost and enrich good soil, choosing the right plants for the region where they grow, and understanding the complexities in how to tend plants. You can’t learn farming in a video or from one book, or by “hanging out, picking up the vibe” at someone’s farm every so often. It takes a long time to get the balance right.

Though I honor the fact that our good neighbor at Hunt Club Farm is an enterprising businessman, most people still look at a piece of land and a person working it with glazed over eyes. They don’t mind paying to ride around and gawk at farmscapes decorated like a movie set for Night of the Living Dead, or some such midnight movie. But they still want cheap food at the Wal-Mart. I wonder what messages about “farm life” come home with the kiddies and the horror-sated teens along with their pumpkins. And I wonder how many of those pumpkins–perfectly good food–get smashed on Halloween, tossed in the street, or dumped in the trash can on November 1 or 2.

Now that’s scary.