It begins, as all 21st-century parables must, with a shaky video posted from a pumpkin patch.

Melody Schwabe of St. Andrews, Manitoba, was alone in her field Friday morning, Sept. 5, staring at 15 acres of pumpkins that had just lost their leafy canopy to an untimely frost. Her words tumbled out: “I just don’t have any fight left.”

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She wasn’t playing for sympathy. She was just a farmer with frostbitten vines and the looming knowledge that her family’s sole livelihood lay exposed under the cold Sept. sky.

Within hours, the video was watched by half a million people. And then they came to help.

The Pumpkin Exodus

By sundown Friday, the Schwabe farm looked less like a place of business and more like an old-fashioned barn raising. Pickup trucks rolled in, spilling fami

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