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September 9, 2024
CHILTON – With chilly air and colored leaves on the horizon, Polly’s Pumpkin Patch is already preparing for the fall season.
However, Polly Roland said she and her husband, Gary Juckem, offer much more than pumpkins at the patch – making the farm a multi-seasonal destination for families.
The retired couple has run Polly’s Pumpkin Patch for the last 21 years – expanding from pumpkins to sunflowers to family-friendly activities.
A little bit of history
Polly’s Pumpkin Patch, Roland said, is “a century farm.”
“Gary’s great-grandfather bought the property in 1889, I believe,” she said. “It has passed through the generations.”
Throughout the years, Roland said the farm has grown various crops.
She said she and Juckem bought the property in 2002 – making it a fourth-generation farm – and officially opened Polly’s Pumpkin Patch in 2003.
“We started with… a few acres of land, and decided to grow pumpkins,” she said. “We have grown from a few acres up to 80 acres now.”
In addition to the pumpkins – which take up about 35 acres – Roland said they also grow soybeans, hay and sunflowers.
Sunflower season, pumpkin season
Roland said Polly’s revolves around two seasons – sunflower season and pumpkin/fall season.
Adding sunflowers to the farm – which take up about five acres of land – is a newer development that Roland said happened about three years ago.
“We planted the variety in the field, and then we planted another few varieties of different colors,” she said. “We have always gone and picked those in the morning and had them available for sale. This year, we did that, but we also decided that the last few days we would let people pick whatever they wanted out of there and just take them home.”
This year, she said the sunflower season ran from July 20 through Aug. 6 – which is the peak season for the flowers.
Immediately after, Roland said she and Juckem began preparing for the fall season – aka pumpkin season – which starts Sept. 13.
“There are fences that we put up, there are signs to put up,” she said. “We’ve spent a lot of time painting signs and repairing everything.”
Roland said it’s a careful game she and Juckem have to play because if they put the signage out early, people who drive past think that they’re open and will stop by.
“So really, we’re not going to get any signs or anything put up until after Labor Day,” she said. “So we have that week and a half to get everything put up and ready.”
Another factor when it comes to prepping for the fall season, she said, is ordering enough soda, supplies for caramel apples – “enough of everything.”
“The ordering actually takes quite a bit of time, with inventory and everything, and then pickup and getting stuff delivered,” she said. “It’s a lot of work, and it’s just me and Gary (prepping).”
And of course, Roland said it wouldn’t be a pumpkin patch if people couldn’t come out and pick pumpkins.
“We do give wagon rides out to the pumpkin patch,” she said. “On the weekends, it’s all day long… but during the week, it’s limited times – just because it’s not as busy.”
Each year, Roland said Polly’s also has a corn maze, which is designed and created by a local company.
“People can go in the maze on Friday and Saturday nights, too – totally in the dark,” she said. “They can bring flashlights, and they get a glow stick.”
Polly’s fall season, she said, runs through the end of October.
The farm store
In addition to the sunflower and pumpkin fields, Roland said Polly’s also has a farm store – which carries a variety of different items depending on the season.
During the fall season, she said the store offers homemade apple cider donuts and pumpkin donuts, caramel apples and apple cider cookies.
“On the weekends, we usually are frying donuts almost all day long,” she said. “You can smell that outside, and it is just so yummy. I think we need one of those bells like Krispy Kreme used to do – they put off a buzz or something when the donuts were done.”
During sunflower season, Roland said they also carry Michigan blueberries.
Other products that the store tends to offer year-round include homemade pies, Door County maple syrup, local honey and locally jarred, pickled veggies.
And, on Saturday and Sunday when the patch is open, Roland said Polly’s serves lunch items, such as hot dogs, burgers, brats and grilled cheese.
“We have a kitchen, and so we do serve some hot food on the weekend,” she said.
Endless activities
When families, couples, schools and work groups come to Polly’s Pumpkin Patch, Roland said they can expect to find a variety of different activities to choose from – no matter the season.
This year, she said there are many new options as well, including:
- A combine that has four slides coming out of it
- A giant, Wisconsin-shaped chair for photos
- Nine-hole mini golf
- A tire mountain for kids to climb on
One of the returning activities includes the corn cannons – where people shoot at targets – “which is one of the most popular things.”
“We have our duck races, our straw bale climb – and we have what we call the human hamster wheel,” she said. “It’s tubes that people can go in and roll around.”
Roland said Polly’s Pumpkin Patch will also have pumpkin bowling and gravity box football – “where you just throw the balls through the hoop or the tires and see what you can do.”
“We do have a lot of stuff for little kids, like the tire mountain,” she said. “But, geez, the adults go down the slide. They like the roller tubes – the parents will get in there with the kids. And I have to say, the corn cannons are probably the adults’ favorite thing.”
Roland said Polly’s also has farm animals – such as goats, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, mini horses and mini donkeys – that guests can visit.
In the off-season
When the snow falls, and guests are no longer picking out pumpkins or purchasing sunflowers, Roland said she and Juckem take a “big rest.”
But then, she said, it’s back to work.
“The first week in November is taking everything down and getting it put away,” she said. “During the winter, it’s repairing things again, or painting signs or taking inventory on the seed that is left over and what we need to order. We update all of our equipment and make sure that they’re all in working condition, and (perform) oil changes – all that stuff. There’s so much to do.”
Roland said the amount of work she and Juckem do for Polly’s Pumpkin Patch is proof of how much they truly love what they do.
“If we didn’t like it, we wouldn’t be doing it,” she said.
An NFL Draft corn maze
This year, Roland said Polly’s Pumpkin Patch has a special corn maze to promote next April’s 2025 Draft.
“The NFL Draft team… they wanted to incorporate some agriculture and stuff to push and promote Wisconsin agriculture,” she said. “So, they asked the Wisconsin Farm Bureau if they could recommend some farms that might be interested, and we were one of the ones that was recommended.”
Roland said the NFL Draft team came and visited Polly’s, chose the patch as one of four corn mazes to design the NFL Draft logo within the maze – “and they approved it and everything.”
The maze, she said, features the NFL Draft official logo with a goat and pig tossing a football back and forth, with the saying “#1 Pick is Polly’s.”
“(Travel Calumet) is really helping us promote it, (as is the) Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association,” she said.
Though the maze helps to further spread awareness of the upcoming 2025 draft, Roland said she hopes it spreads awareness of Polly’s as well.
“I’m really excited about it,” she said. “I think it will bring in more people.”
Roland said she would love to see Polly’s corn maze on TV during a Packers game.
“I would really love it if it was on the jumbotron,” she said. “That is going to be one of my suggestions to my NFL Draft team to see if that could possibly happen.”
The corn maze, she said, will be combined once the fall season is over, and the corn will be sold.
Polly’s Pumpkin Patch is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays from Sept. 13 through Oct. 31
To learn more, visit pollyspumpkinpatch.com.
