​Hamburgers for Halloween?

Halloween has always been a tradition on farms – corn mazes, pumpkins, gourds, fall displays… but it’s different when you grow up on a farm yourself.  Unless you ventured into a nearby town for door to door knocking, you had a different experience out on the country roads. 

We were a mix between a trick or treating family and enjoying a quiet night with the lights out kind of family.  My mom became adept at recycling lengths of material and cheap thrift store finds and turning it into whatever we wanted to become.  In my case, year after year, I always wanted to be a unicorn or the Hamburglar...very fitting for a beef farmer.  My sister and I would prep for a Halloween night like any other – carving pumpkins, looking for the biggest bag, eating pumpkin seeds and bursting with excitement, but on the night itself we never made it very far.  We’d walk down our long road, past hay fields and lengthy driveways, definitely burning off all calories before consuming any treats.  When you live in the country, there’s very few homes to actually visit by foot, so everyone expects less visitors.  Even my parents would only buy a dozen big chocolate bars and one or two neighbouring kids would leave with most of them.  Or, my sister, dad and I would pilfer the rest upon returning home for the evening.  Lucky for us, we would get the same treatment at other farms down the road – jumbo bars, juice boxes, cans of pop, candy apples, cotton candy, chips and baked goods, mixed with friendly hugs and conversation.  After ten homes our bags were full and we were exhausted from trekking.

I would hear stories the next day at school of hours of door to door treating with pillow cases full of wrapped candies, but this Hamburglar was content with neighbourly visits and a large bag of homemade goods.  Well, not 100% satisfied because no one ever gave out hamburgers.