Falling for Nebraska Pumpkin PatchesLike the crops they grow and the company they keep, pumpkin patches are full of personality. Story by Kristen Friesen |
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LIKE CLOCKWORK, Gene and Sheila Horak perform a daily walk-through of each building, adjusting repair lists and bantering over what will be their next project at The Scarecrow Patch, 20 acres of autumn splendor just outside of St. Libory in central Nebraska.
There’s a settled nature to the Horaks, like the unassuming way their old, yellow house sits comfortably between the corn maze and barn, now repurposed as their daughter’s photography studio. A corn crib bearing one son’s autograph banged out in nails has Sheila reminiscing of a time when her kids couldn’t pull their own weight, let alone anyone else’s.
The business grew up with their kids, and now playpens and highchairs indicate the grandchildren are underfoot.
Nebraska has no fewer than 16 pumpkin patches, maybe more, extending from the unlikely confines of the metro area to the wide open of the Panhandle. They are the stomping ground of families and school groups. They play host to company parties, reunions and birthday parties. These are places that inspire the priceless expressions that draw us again and again to the family scrapbook.
Stories rooted in these pumpkin patches are carefully tended by the sort of folks like the Horaks who work nine months of the year in anticipation of company come fall. These hospitable hosts happily receive their fellow Nebraskans – like welcome mats at the revolving front door – with the gracious understanding that no one really wipes their feet first. The shrill sound of bliss is thanks enough.
“When they cry when it’s time to go home, I know they’ve had a good time,” Sheila Horak said.
With Halloween at the end of October, they bid their guests-turned-friends a hearty farewell until next year. In the meantime, they’ll be planning, planting and preparing for the next short, glorious autumn in Nebraska. These are some of their stories.
Hazel’s Pumpkin Patch
and Bale Maze, Lodgepole
Don’t worry; he knows what he’s doing. Twelve-year-old Andrew Dible has a system for fetching the 100-150 pound Prizewinner pumpkins from his family’s three-acre pumpkin patch in Lodgepole, known as Hazel’s Pumpkin Patch and Bale Maze.
It helps that Andrew has a strong back. After rolling the beasts across the field like giant orange snowballs, Andrew uses all his weight (strong legs and quite a bit of shoulder) to heave them up into a green cart which his dad cleverly hitched to the back of a John Deere tractor. Delivering them to gasping customers is the best part.
Though Mom and Dad (Kelley and Gary Dible) ordered 7,000 pumpkin seeds of 22 varieties last year, it’s the legendary Prizewinners that have customers flocking in like seasonal early birds. Every year on opening day, guests come in early for dibs on the biggest pumpkin, Kelley said. This year the Dibles are adding blue, red and white “giants” to the mix. By mid-October they’ll be clean out, but front porches in Cheyenne County will be bursting with color.
Gary is content to let Andrew do the heavy work. In fact, he wouldn’t think of interfering with his son’s experience, though it sure does take him back. Daily chores, tending to livestock and some of the best outdoor fun to be had were the ingredients for his own happy childhood – exactly what Gary and Kelley wish for their kids.
When the Dibles moved to Nebraska six years ago, what they missed most was their favorite pumpkin patch near where they had lived in central Kansas. “My wife was just beside herself,” Gary said. “It went from ‘Somebody should be doing this!’ to ‘We should be doing this!’ ”
Because Kelley works as a librarian for Sidney High School and Gary is manager of 21st Century Equipment, a John Deere dealership, the family settled in nearby Sidney, but their “hobby farm” is where they spend the lion’s share of their free time. In January the pumpkin seeds are ordered. Kelley and the kids dedicate nearly every day of each “summer off” preparing for seven weeks of business come mid-September.
At 10 years old, Kate is Mom’s right hand. The twosome most often can be found holed up in what was once the property’s old farmhouse. Transformed by loud, purple paint, the shop is full of surprises. Exquisite costumes – genies, princesses, pirates, knights and gunslingers – parade in and out, and wizard and witch hats fly off the shelves. That a Pope hat recently went home with a local Lutheran minister is a story the entire family loves to tell.
Kelley orders everything, but Kate prices it. “She’s been pricing everything – each piece of candy, every costume and all the toys – since she was in preschool,” Kelly said. Now that Kate’s older, working together allows the Dible girls genuine time for conversation.
The sound of Kate’s popcorn popper punctuates the hum of Andrew’s mower in the distance. According to both parents, there are no arms being twisted. “It’s their project,” Kelley said of the kids’ commitment to the patch, now in its fifth year. “If it weren’t, we wouldn’t do it.”
“Things don’t just fall in your lap,” Gary said. “But our kids get to do things other kids don’t. They’ve learned how things grow, and they’re both turning into little farm nerds.”
For Gary and Kelley Dible, that’s another wish granted . . . thanks to their Panhandle pumpkin patch.