On a sunny October afternoon in Derbyshire, hundreds of people push wheelbarrows around a pumpkin patch in Ashover.

They stop every now and then to assess which one is the biggest, the most orange, the most perfect, and there are little green and gray ones too.

A man joined the increasingly long queue to pay – I ask him if he is bothered by “Halloween Budget”coming on wednesday

“They’re, I don’t understand why it’s always hikes and less service,” he says, “standard, isn’t it?”.

For months, Labor has been warning people that there will be short-term pain for long-term good.

And, trying to avoid scaring people any more, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said his tax decisions would be “tough but fair” to jump-start the economy and save failing public services such as hospitals, schools and roads.

And, she says, “working families” or “strugglers” have nothing to worry about.

“Yes, we are hard workers,” says Ian Strange, who is here with his family. He has worked in the NHS for 25 years and his wife is a shop worker.

“You have to struggle to survive these days,” he says. “Life is hard, you have to strive for a better life for your family.

“Inflation is high, wages are not increasing, it is hard to get rid of money, food is expensive, clothes for children, heating for the house, it is very difficult to make long wages.”

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Penny Booth, his wife, says he “has to budget for everything” and “can’t take any more financial pain”.

Chancellor says ‘strugglers’ could be stuck on NHS waiting lists, their children teach in collapsing schools or workers who cannot afford their own home.

Allen Tomlinson, who runs Ashover Family Farm, considers himself a fighter, but he fears that won’t insulate him from what’s to come.

To supplement his dairy farming, he has grown pumpkins, among other things, but is worried about changes to inheritance tax.

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“Agriculture has been very difficult in the last few years,” he says, “and a major tax could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

“The removal of farm property support could end us as a business because I wouldn’t be able to pass this business on to the next generation.”

A lawyer here tells me he has been “very busy” with people trading over the line because of concerns about changes to capital gains tax, but he says: “we have to be realistic about the tax we pay and to the funds we pay. are necessary to improve services”.