Some people are avid pumpkin fans and I happen to be part of that group. Pumpkin shakes, lattes, savory dishes, if it has pumpkin as a main ingredient, you can be fairly confident that I will enjoy eating it or drinking it.
Alas, as we are trying to save money, buying tons of pumpkins is not fiscally responsible. They aren't the cheapest produce, and even the couple of dollars for a can adds up.
I had this idea though...what do pumpkin patches do with all those pumpkins they couldn't sell? They have to at least sell them for less right? So I called a local pumpkin patch. Sure enough, they were selling a wheelbarrow full for only 10 dollars the day after Halloween.
I had plans to load that wheelbarrow to the brim. But I was doing this with a 6 week old in a carrier on me and a grumpy toddler who kept throwing tantrums and throwing herself in the dirt ...so I stopped early.
You can see the amount I bought below.
We (aka Blake) chopped them all up, roasted them, and then froze some as chunks and some was pureed and frozen as puree. I believe we made six bags worth of chunks and eight of puree. So 14 recipes worth for my ten dollars, not counting all of the pumpkin seeds we roasted as well. Even stopping where I did (though I could have gotten more), I feel like we got our money's worth.
We have lots of leftover candy (mostly because we were gone for part of the night and didn't have lights on or any decorations for the rest of the night...so no one came to our door).
I had read a post this week that at first made me feel guilty about this candy. It talked about how much of the chocolate is harvested with child labor.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that presenting child labor as all bad is really one sided.
The opponents of child labor list the lack of education and childhood fun as two reasons it should be outlawed and illegal to use child labor. But Blake and I started talking about what we know about schools in Ghana. There is no free public education, they have to pay for it.
If these kids had the money to go to school, they would be there. The fact that they are working means that their family needs them to work, probably for food, maybe to send a younger sibling to school.
I read some articles today that back up our understanding of the problem. These articles said that if these groups get their way and outlaw child labor, it still won't give those kids an education or their childhood playtime. It will more likely force them to work worse jobs with less pay, maybe even increase the likelihood of child trafficking.
What is needed is programs where the working kids are better represented, like in some of Latin America, where there is a union for child laborers. There also could be a push for the places that employ children to give some schooling as part of their unemployment.
Now, I know that the conditions these kids work in is bad, and I don't disagree that there should be some changes there too, but I don't agree with the agenda to boycott all companies that use child labor just because they employ children under 15.
Just my 2cents on the topic.
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