You’d think it would take intense concentration to carve a 300-pound pumpkin with a Buck knife in front of a crowd keenly judging your speed and skill.

But when you’ve been doing it for nearly four decades, as Farmer Mike has, it comes pretty easy. Heck, you might even have time for some light-hearted fun.

“I’ll look into the crowd, and I’ll see somebody,” says Farmer Mike, nickname of San Jose’s Mike Valladao. “It’s funny because I’m staring at them, and it’s like, ‘I’m not hitting on you. I just like your eyebrows. I want to get your cheeks into a pumpkin.’ So sometimes people in the audience do end up on my pumpkins — or at least pieces of them do.”

Bystanders don’t usually notice they’re the model, but their spouses often do. “Normally it’s like, ‘Oh my god, that looks like you, dea

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