A little slice of American halloween in Wales

Billy Bob’s farm has decided to move away from all the spookier side of halloween, and have gone for an American twist for their pumpkin patch.

Transcript

00:00I think it's a suppressed childhood thing. I wasn't allowed to celebrate Halloween very much

00:06as a child and I think this is my like rebellion is just growing five acres of pumpkins.

00:14Naomi and her husband Josh run Billy Bob's farm and largely started it all from nothing.

00:19They only took it on seven years ago and the pumpkin patch has only been going for five years.

00:24It's been a huge growth for the pair and they've found that the pumpkin farming is one of their

00:28favourite parts of the job. We started in 2018 farming so I'm not from a farming background my

00:35husband Josh is but we didn't have any farm we didn't have a farm we didn't have any ground

00:41we didn't have any animals so we started from scratch back then. The pumpkin patch we're on our

00:46fifth year. During Covid pretty much like everybody else with a vegetable patch we grew a very small

00:52amount of pumpkins sold them at the end of our drive during social distancing. Josh couldn't

00:58believe the uptake that you know we live uh sort of in a housing estate and they sold out within

01:04about 30 minutes was probably so that's where the idea was born. Like I said I've always loved

01:09Halloween so the opportunity to do something around my favourite time of year very very appealing.

01:15Billy Bob's is part of some people's family traditions now. Naomi says that families come

01:20back every year and she loves being able to be part of people's Halloween.

01:23Yeah we've got faces that have been coming back from like the first year so we've got little

01:29children that have been babies in arms and they're now like five years old with siblings and it's just

01:35really nice to see people grow up and it almost becomes part of their annual tradition so they've

01:41got to get their pictures and their matching clothes and they've got to go and stand in front of one of

01:45the the scenes behind um and then they're almost like family pictures so it's really really special.

01:54The growth of Billy Bob's farm largely goes hand in hand with the growth of Halloween itself.

01:58Ten years ago pumpkin batches were an American thing and really just a novelty over on this side

02:03of the pond but now they've become a staple of people's autumns and a hugely celebrated part of spooky season.

02:09I think it comes back as being that trickle treating asking for sweets off strangers and

02:15like interrupting somebody with children with a packet of eggs so I think it always had a bit of a

02:20negative connotation um it's very very popular in America um that's where the pumpkins originally come

02:27from and I think it's it's almost celebrating the seasonality now like we've always celebrated

02:32Christmas there's always events to go see Santa you know Valentine's Day I would argue has also grown

02:37and also very commercialized American practice but you know for us it's a matter of having people

02:44spend time going for a walk down to the pumpkin patch spending time with their family taking pictures

02:50making memories like if you slip and fall over as a toddler in the mud in like your uh your wetsuit

02:55then it's part of that oh remember that time that this happened.