CWIMA Summit & Expo: ‘A new adventure every year’
Is Oshkosh on pace to reach its housing goals?
September 1, 2025
MOSINEE – When Adam Toboyek and Gina Reed got engaged in 2019, like many other couples, they said they envisioned a traditional wedding celebration.
But by the time 2020 arrived – with the world in the grip of a pandemic and venues shutting their doors – the couple said they found themselves reimagining more than just their big day.
Rather than wait out the uncertainty, the couple planted new roots – literally – planting a pumpkin farm on their 10-acre property in Mosinee.
An idea grows
Toboyek said he grew up in the Mosinee area and has spent the last 19 years working for the same company.
Reed, on the other hand, is originally from Michigan.
After earning her bachelor’s degree in marketing and management, she said she moved to Wisconsin for a short-term job.
“I only planned on staying six months,” she said, “and it has been 13 years that I’ve been here now. I met Adam eight months after being here, and we’ve been together ever since.”
“She met her prince charming in Wisconsin,” Toboyek said with a smile.
Toboyek said wedding planning got sidelined as they found themselves caught up in something else entirely – growing pumpkins.
“There is a whole backstory of pumpkins,” he said. “It’s just something I’ve done all my life.”
Toboyek said his grandmother shared photos of him when he was only three or four years old, sitting on a mound of pumpkins – pumpkins his grandparents grew and sold by the side of the road.
“It’s just something I always had an interest in,” he said.
A self-proclaimed fall and Halloween enthusiast, Toboyek said he’s grown pumpkins on and off over the years.
“I’ve just always felt a connection to them,” he said. “It’s something I genuinely enjoy.”
So, in 2020, after buying a house with some land, Toboyek said they got to work on the pumpkin patch.
“It was a lot of weeds, and part of it was a field and [there were some] small trees,” he said.
Reed said she was skeptical at first, even telling Toboyek he “might be a little crazy.”
With the patch located so far from the city, she said she wasn’t sure it would take off.
“It’s a little country drive to get to us,” he said.
Despite those reservations, the couple said they went ahead with the plan.
That spring, as the snow thawed, Toboyek said he walked the property and started to imagine the possibilities.
“I decided I could put a little pumpkin patch in here,” he said.
As he started to mow and hand-till the land, Toboyek said it was clear that it hadn’t been worked for many years.
He said he quickly recognized that doing it all by hand wouldn’t be enough.
That’s when Toboyek said he noticed a tractor across the road.
“Because we’re up on a high hill, I could see a white tractor going back and forth,” he said. “And I thought, ‘I’m going to hop on a four-wheeler and take a ride down and introduce myself.’”
After meeting his neighbor, David Strasser – who had been out discing his own field – Toboyek said he asked him if he might be willing to lend a hand.
“He ended up [bringing over his] plow and actually plowed it for us,” he said. “David was kind of how this all got started… If I hadn’t heard that tractor that day, I don’t think Toboyek’s Pumpkin Farm would be here today.”
Vine and dandy
The couple said the pumpkin farm (located at 139550 Strand Lane) has steadily grown since its first planting.
The quarter-of-an-acre operation – with the entire hand-planted crop yielding a few hundred pumpkins – Toboyek said, has grown to four acres this year.
And, if Mother Nature continues to be favorable, he said they could end up with several thousand pumpkins this fall – potentially their biggest and best harvest since they’ve started.
Today, Toboyek’s Pumpkin Farm LLC grows 50-60 varieties of pumpkins and squash, Toboyek said, including the traditional orange pumpkins, white pumpkins, warty pumpkins, the popular Cinderella stacking pumpkins and even a crop of giant pumpkins.
“I grow the giant pumpkins here,” he said. “The Atlantic Giants – the big, big ones.”
Those “big, big ones,” Toboyek said, are a major draw for visitors – noting that it’s impressive to see such massive pumpkins growing on vines spanning roughly a thousand square feet.
When the couple started growing pumpkins on their land in 2020, Toboyek said he joined the Wisconsin Giant Pumpkin Growers (WGPG) – a nonprofit networking organization for growers of giant fruits and vegetables.
When he joined, he said he received a packet of seeds in the mail – which included giant watermelon, gourd, tomato, squash and of course, pumpkin seeds.
Starting off strong, Toboyek said later that fall, he took his first crack at a giant pumpkin to the River Prairie Ginormous Pumpkin Festival in Altoona.
He said the pumpkin weighed in at 852 pounds.
Not a record breaker in weight, but Toboyek said his giant pumpkin received the highly sought Howard Dill Award – which is named after the man who developed the genetically modified Dill’s Atlantic Giant Pumpkin seeds – for the prettiest looking pumpkin in color, symmetry/shape.
Toboyek said his biggest giant pumpkin to date was grown in 2024 and weighed in at 2,085 pounds.
During the growing process, Toboyek said giant pumpkins require a lot of “special care.”
The seeds, he said, are started indoors in April before being transferred to a heated greenhouse outside.
To ensure the giant pumpkins remain pure, Toboyek said pollination is carefully controlled to prevent cross-pollination by bees.
Along the way, he said the plants are pruned and their vines are trained for optimal growth.
By mid-June, he said the giant pumpkins begin their rapid growth phase, sometimes gaining more than 60 pounds in a single day.
The couple said there are no vacations during the growing season – noting that it’s a constant job of weeding, watering and fertilizing and even a couple of days off would set them back.
This year, Toboyek said they have three giant pumpkins they plan to take to festivals to be weighed in.
Just as growing giant pumpkins is a process, Toboyek said so, too, is transporting them – which requires the use of a friend’s boom truck with a crane, a giant cradle harness, a fork truck and a truck (or trailer) depending on how large the giant pumpkin is.
Toboyek said transporting the giant pumpkins requires precision and caution to keep them from splitting, as any damage would make them ineligible for competition.
A full-time business
Though both Toboyek and Reed both work full-time jobs off the farm, they said every night and weekend is spent working with the pumpkins – giants or otherwise.
These nightly duties, Toboyek said, are spent in the patch making the soil perfect for their crop, doing social media and marketing, harvesting pumpkins and/or helping customers when they open for business in the fall.
Pumpkin harvesting at Toboyek’s Pumpkin Farm, he said, begins around Labor Day weekend and continues as needed throughout the season until the entire crop is gathered.
This year, Toboyek said, their goal is to keep the farm open through Oct. 31.
Despite growing and selling thousands of pumpkins annually, he said they’ve sold out every year since opening.
“That’s how popular it’s become,” he said. “People love it out here. We have great reviews. It’s a nice country drive. You can go to a box store and buy a pumpkin, but it’s more of an experience [here].”
Toboyek said visiting the farm in the fall is special, as the trees reach their peak color during the last weekend of September and the first weekend of October.
“Our road rolls up and down as you come in,” he said. “It’s like you’re driving through a tunnel, and the trees are just fire-red, orange and yellow. It’s almost like a picture.”
As visitors arrive at Toboyek’s Pumpkin Farm, Toboyek said they will not only find different varieties of pumpkins to choose from, but also a game or two for the kids; plenty of photo opportunities with vignettes, including a vintage truck, hay bales, a corn field and, of course, pumpkins; and even a petting zoo on the last weekend of September (weather permitting) that Reed’s godson, Easton, started when he was only six years old.
Even with the uncertainty Mother Nature brings – “one hailstorm could take you out” – Toboyek said “we do it for the fun of it.”
“I would say we just really enjoy it,” he said, “and we like making use of our land.”
At the end of the day, Reed said the farm’s mission is to keep pumpkins affordable, allowing families to carve pumpkins and build memories.
“We believe everybody should be able to afford a pumpkin,” she said. “We like being able to share with the community.”
Toboyek said each day on the farm brings a new challenge.
“You just have to go out there and face it,” he said. “And, at the end of the day, we are still here.”
In addition to pumpkins, Tobyoek’s Pumpkin Farm also grows and sells sweet corn, which is available for purchase at the farm.
For more details, head to the farm’s Facebook page.
