Last Halloween, Aroostook County kids got to dig through buried eyeballs, bones and brains in a faux graveyard to unearth bags of potato chips.
This year, they’ll get to do it again during Houlton’s All Shire’s Eve.
It’s part of a growing “Trick or Tater” national trend. Daniel J. Corey Farms of Monticello rolled a large green tractor and the graveyard experience into historic Market Square in 2025 for the innovative spooky spuds adventure. The immersive event really took off.
Working alongside the town’s Community Impact Alliance, Ben Corey and Chloe Wheeler helped kids capture almost 900 bags of potato chips for their Halloween treat.
The increasingly popular Trick-or-Tater, which involves handing out potatoes alongside the usual fun-size candy, started five years ago on social media, according to Kayla Vogel, manager of community engagement and influencer partnerships for Potatoes USA, the national marketing and research organization for potato farmers.
The spooky spuds movement is booming around the country and in some communities it’s now a tradition with a “potato house” on every block, Vogel said.
“People get really excited when they find the potatoes that were out there,” she said. “It’s been a really fun way for us to highlight potatoes not only as a nutrient dense vegetable but offer a fun way to be part of Halloween.”
The County couple decided, instead of offering the traditional All Shire’s Eve trunk or treat fun, they would bring the biggest green tractor for a hayride and then set up the graveyard in a trough with soil so the kids could have a fun, spooky experience, said Wheeler, who handles community engagement for the seed potato farm.
“Prior to Halloween we purchased 1,000 bags of Lay’s potato chips, and their treat is a bag of Lay’s potato chips grown from our seed potatoes,” she said. “It’s important for Ben to talk about farming to future generations, and when you plant a big green tractor downtown kids naturally ask questions and that’s a gateway for Ben to talk about it.”
Frito Lay breeds their own proprietary potato variety for taste, quality and crispness, Dan Corey said from their potato farm in Florida.
“So it’s always the same to make sure the golden Lay’s taste exactly the same as when you were 3 years old to today,” he said.
Dan Corey Farms in Maine and Florida provide seed potatoes that are planted and grown from Florida to Canada and then harvested for the snack food company.
“Our seeds reach a lot of acres,” Corey said. “We’re supplying the Florida growers, North Carolina, South Carolina, Delaware, Indiana.”
During the school year, Wheeler travels to local schools to teach the students a farm to table lesson.
“I like to take every opportunity I can to bring Ben and his family and the farm into the community and share with everybody the reality that there are small families who work together to put the food on your table,” she said. “So impressive to represent farm families and a good opportunity for our community to see that these big farmers are real people and real families that take pride in what they do.”
Whether in school or during the Halloween event, the kids are naturally very curious and have all kinds of questions about farming.
“What color are the tractors?”
“What’s the biggest potato you’ve ever grown?”
When Wheeler visits a school she often has a lesson where the students cook something from a potato.
“The last time I went, we made french fries,” Wheeler said. “The kids used vegetable cutters and cut their potatoes and turned them right into french fries. They could really see what harvest to table looks like and they took vegetable cutters home.”
Families are still reaching out to Wheeler to share that they now use the vegetable cutters and make the fries all the time, she said.
According to Dan Corey, the Caribou Russet is a bigger potato and makes an excellent french fry because of its length.
For Halloween this year they are bringing a tractor back downtown, but a bigger one this time, Wheeler said.
“This year we will dive into the barnyard theme and instead of Lay’s Classic potato chips we actually purchased Lay’s Ruffles, which come in a red bag, so that’s even more fitting,” she said.
Potatoes USA’s chefs cooked up a new lineup of spooky spud recipes for the season. They include Spooky Spud Skulls, crispy skull-shaped potatoes that become a “frightful” appetizer with cheese and pepperoni; Monster Mash, green mashed potatoes; and Mashed Potato Mummy Meatloaf Cupcakes, which the council said are perfect for a Halloween-inspired family dinner or a savory cupcake-decorating station at any spooky celebration.
The Halloween event is next Saturday in downtown Houlton starting at 3 p.m.
