KAPOLEI — First, let's do the math. At Aloun Farms in Kapolei, each acre produces about 3,000 pumpkins. And 123 acres are planted in pumpkins this year. Multiply it out, said company spokesman Terry Phillips, and that comes out, roughly, to one pumpkin for every kid on O'ahu.

Try wait. What about the adults?

Children and adults of all ages were hauling the popular Halloween squash away from the farm's pumpkin patch yesterday by whatever means they could muster: crossed arms, big plastic bags, cardboard boxes and little red wagons. Even grandmothers were being pressed into light duty, and babies had to watch as their strollers were converted into makeshift pumpkin trucks.

"We had a great crop this year. Our best ever," Phillips said. A hot, dry summer followed by a cool fall has produced the biggest, brightest crop of potential jack-o'-lanterns in the farm's five-year history of pumpkin producing.

So yesterday, the first official day of pumpkin picking season in Hawai'i, it seemed like nearly every family was able to tromp through the fields and find just the right orange orb ready to be transformed into a scary face, happy ghost, or frightened cat.

"We're going to take them all home, carve 'em up and have a competition," said Wayne Kauwe of Wai'anae as he stood at the edge of a pumpkin field with his daughter Tezra, 10, and son Manu, 13, and pondered how to get at least 50 pounds of pumpkin back to the paying booth and then to the car.

"Mine's going to be the scariest yet," Manu said.

Meanwhile, 4-year-old James Lum of Pearl City said he was planning to put a big happy face on the 12-pound pumpkin he found halfway down one of the garden paths filled with hundreds of people yesterday. (As a general rule, the bigger the pumpkin, the further you had to carry it).

James was there with his parents Jon and Amy Lum and 9-month-old brother Jonathan, who is going to be a bumblebee for Halloween, according to Amy.

(The jack-o'-lantern tradition, by the way, goes back hundreds of years into Irish history, when residents on All Hallows Eve hollowed out turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes and beets and placed lights in them to ward off evil spirits like a certain Old Jack, who had been refused entry into heaven and hell and was doomed to wander forever in darkness between them using only an ember of fire inside a turnip to guide him. It wasn't until the first Irish immigrants arrived in America and discovered that pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve that the tradition took hold here.)

"It's a lot of fun for the kids," said John Cervenka, a Schofield Barracks resident who was visiting the pumpkin patch for the third straight year, along with his wife Andrea and son Zachary, 6. "It's good for them to come out here and see where these things really come from."

Until a few years ago, almost all the pumpkins in Hawai'i came from somewhere on the Mainland. Aloun Farms began experimenting with the crop locally about five years ago and now produces about 80 percent of the pumpkins sold in the state.

And while even a year or two ago the pumpkin patch could be a relatively quiet place, this year it was bustling like a carnival. In addition to getting a pumpkin, families could hitch a ride on a pony or a hay wagon, step into a small petting zoo, eat a plate lunch (including fresh, locally grown zucchini), make a donation to the Food Bank and even use a giant slingshot to send pumpkins flying toward a swinging target.

"It's just a good fun activity for the whole family," said Anne Power, who came with her husband Barry, daughter Sarah, 8, and son Josh, 3, all the way from Hawai'i Kai.

All family members got to pick the pumpkin that suited them best, she said.

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.