If there is anything to love about living with a field of pumpkins in your backyard, it is being able to use them for socialization, for meals and for decoration according to freshman Samantha Armstrong.

“You can use [the pumpkins] for anything,” Armstrong said. “People come and get pumpkins ‘cause it’s just in my backyard. Every single day, tons of people, and almost everybody. Every single year, it’s the same people.”

Armstrong sells gourds, pie pumpkins, jack-o-lantern pumpkins, snowball pumpkins and squash.

“Over the summer, we plant them by hand, like two to three seeds a spot,” she said. “We do acres and acres. Then, we do weed killers over the summer, and then they grow and we hand-pick them and wash them and put them out on the trailers.”

Though Armstrong believes that GMOs do not have a place in the world, her family does use pesticides on their produce in order to keep the bugs away.

Armstrong thinks that pesticides work sometimes, but they are not necessary for all crops. In fact, she did not use pesticides on her pumpkins this year. However, while she does not think that the chemicals are good for people. She believes that they are okay to use on pumpkins.

“They’re not really being eaten,” Armstrong said. “If we don’t do it, they’ll be eaten by bugs, and then we won’t have them.”