Sheila, Kelby and Sharla all have their own roles at their family farm during the pumpkin season. This year marks the 50th year for Schaake's Pumpkin Patch.
Pumpkins are on the way at Schaake’s Pumpkin Patch, but this year marks an especially sentimental year for the family farmers. The pumpkin patch is celebrating its 50th anniversary with the same values it had from Day 1 – centered on family, relationships, education and bringing people any pumpkin they could ever want.
The patch will open for the season at 9 a.m. Sept. 27 and then be open from noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday until Halloween. Schaake’s is also planning on bringing some new celebratory components to the season for the anniversary.
The patch started as a 4-H project for farm owners Larry and Janet’s son Scott and daughter Sheila. The pumpkins generated more and more traction each year and what started as sales out of the back of a pickup truck moved to a parking lot, then a corner of a shed, before warranting a shed built just for pumpkin season. Eventually, it became a you-pick style patch and drew crowds from all over.
The business has been a familywide operation ever since, with each family member having a special role during pumpkin season.
One of Larry and Janet’s other daughters, Sharla Dressler, doesn’t remember a time when the family wasn’t growing pumpkins and building relationships around the patch.
The family started raising pumpkins the year Sharla was born, so selling pumpkins has been a staple her whole life.
“What started off as just, you know, a little 4-H project has grown into this huge agritourism business,” Sharla said. “It’s just crazy what people enjoy and appreciate, even today.”
Sharla said from the minute all the kids were born, pumpkins became a part of their lives and they started to enjoy helping as soon as they could.
Sharla’s daughter, Kelby, started making kettlecorn for the farm when she was around 10 years old, and she still helps around the farm whenever she is home.
Throughout the years as family members moved away, they sometimes questioned if they should keep the patch going, Kelby said. Ultimately they decided to stay at it for people who make the trip to the patch every year and have made their family farm into one of their yearly traditions, she said.
Her grandpa’s legacy of taking over the farm and making it into what it has become today, and especially having it still standing 50 years later, is special to see, she said. Her grandparents have also created an outlet where they get to interact with the same people each year and connect with the community, she said.
Although the patch’s fields got bigger, nothing really ever changed about the patch – which symbolizes the family’s dedication to keeping the patch about the things that really matter, Kelby said. They’ve wanted to use extra incentives to get people to come to the farm, she said.
“What Grandma and Grandpa have created and what they stand for is so much greater than even, like, I can understand, you know, like, Grandpa poured his entire life into the farm,” she said.
This was the first year their parents sat back and let their kids handle the patch completely, and it’s even more special for the 50th year to be that full-circle moment, Kelby said.
“Getting to let them finally see what they created, which is cool that that would happen on the 50th,” Kelby said.
Over the last 50 years, they’ve seen fourth and possibly even fifth generations of families continuing to make the patch a tradition.
“Honestly, so much of what our foundation is, is tradition and family,” Sharla said. “It’s just very cool that people still will come out here and spend the day on the farm and appreciate the farm, because so many people now do not, I mean, have no concept of country, much less how stuff grows.”
The idea of the farm being a place for education was her dad’s goal from the beginning, she said. Over the years, people have caught on to what conditions the pumpkins need to grow best, and it’s rewarding to see those kinds of things catch on with customers.
As schools have had to cut funding and limit fieldtrips, it’s sad to see fewer schools bringing classes to the patch, but Sharla said they have still been able to see the impact over the years.
Many have asked for years for additional activities for families, but they’ve always decided to focus on what the patch has always been. Before the pandemic, Sharla classified the crowds as out of control, but they have since gotten a bit smaller although the customer base remains strong, she said.
Over the years, they’ve tried many different forms of advertising, but have always come back to just word of mouth to get the word out, along with their occasional use of social media. They’ve stood firm of keeping the patch small, quaint and focused on family rather than trends or adding extra stuff, Sharla said.
They agreed it means a lot to see the business be so successful while holding true to its core values.
Over the last couple of decades, Halloween has also become so much more of a holiday, especially one that people decorate for, they agreed. When they started, families would carve maybe one pumpkin each year and there were only a handful of varieties. Now, they grow hundreds of different varieties each season and people leave with more pumpkins than they can fit in their cars.
“But now there’s so many varieties and they’re so cool, and we try really hard to plant a ton of those, because people can’t find them, and it’s fun to watch the wheelbarrows come in with all the varieties. That’s been a huge change,” she said.
People spend hours out in the fields looking for pumpkins of every shape and color, and oftentimes people bring up so many pumpkins they will have trunks completely full of their picks, Kelby said.
The patch plans to celebrate its big anniversary with contests and food trucks at the farm for a couple of weekends. They’re planning to ask customers to prove how long they’ve been coming to the patch for one of the contests. They also plan to scratch designs on pumpkins for people to find in the fields for a prize.
Schaake’s is also planning to partner with other local small businesses to bring food vendors to the farm on Oct. 11 and 12, as well as Oct. 18. It’s a way to benefit other small businesses while also bringing customers more offerings they have requested in the past. More information will be on the Facebook page and website.
“We need to just state that we wouldn’t be able to be here 50 years if it wasn’t for the people, the repeat customers, the families, the relationships, all of that. And I feel like that’s so important, and we need to remember that as well as, you know, the people that are just starting to come,” Sharla said.