An actual crop that's being harvested, which often gets shunted to the side in RPG games, IME. Picking what your community farms, and is probably largely built around, gives you a lot of details, many of them actionable.
The starting town for my long-running campaign was known for its apples, and so everyone is drinking cider and apple jack, there's a cider press in town, the harvest festival is a big moment for everyone, and like in Forrest Gump, you can find apples in eeeeeverything, to the point that one player, to this day, will start ranting when apples come up in game.
But the town would look different if they were growing corn/maize (which has opportunities for corn mazes and scarecrows), pumpkins (traditional and you can have a classic Disney headless horseman, as well as pumpkin-headed bugbears, etc.), or something else.
Also, I would note that (as you can see in my entry in this year's Pumpkin Spice contest), not everything associated with the harvest should be eeeeevil. This is a natural and important part of the yearly cycle and, symbolically, about aging and death. The scythe used to cut people down makes room for the next generation to grow, etc.
