Twin brothers Landon, left, and Jackson Garrett, 2, lay claim to a large pumpkin as their mother, Ally Garrett, points them to another one during a tour Oct. 17 of Schaake Pumpkin Patch, 1791 North 1500 Road.

Like a monarch butterfly crossing into Mexico, Katelyn Stewart was making an annual fall migration to a Kansas River Valley farm east of Lawrence.

It’s not the sweet nectar of south-of-the-border flowers that entices Stewart and others to the spot, but pumpkins. The University of Kansas senior from Overland Park was returning to Schaake Pumpkin Patch, a regular October destination.

“I’ve been coming here for years,” she said. “My dad went to KU, so he knew about it.”

photo by: Journal-World File

Twin brothers Landon, left, and Jackson Garrett, 2, lay claim to a large pumpkin as their mother, Ally Garrett, points them to another one during a tour Oct. 17, 2016, of Schaake Pumpkin Patch, 1791 North 1500 Road.

On Tuesday, Stewart was introducing her friend Madeline Barth, a KU junior from Leawood, to the patch.? “We bought the pumpkins for the two kids she nannies,” Barth said. “We’re going to have a carving party. I found what I was looking for. It’s round and orange.”

As she took in the displays that the Schaakes have set up along the way from the store near the parking lot to the pumpkin patch, Nadia Scruggs, of Baldwin City, said she was looking for a pumpkin to mark the first Halloween of her 8-month-old son, Winn.

“I want a cute little yellow pumpkin that looks like him,” she said. “Cute, for sure. I may get something to carve. I’ll have to see.”

Like Stewart, Scruggs made many childhood trips with her parents to Schaake Pumpkin Patch.

“I rode on the wagon and went to the patch,” she said. “It was one of my favorite things to do. That’s why I’m now here with my kid.”

After climbing down from a John Deere tractor hooked to a hayrack modified to shuttle passengers to and from the 30-acre pumpkin patch, Janet Schaake, who owns the operation with her husband, Larry, said Stewart and Scruggs were not unique.

“We have people tell us they are the third generation to come out here,” she said of the 41-year-old business. “That makes us feel like spring chickens.”

Even on Tuesday, the parking lot to the farm at 1791 North 1500 Road was full and cars were parked along the south side of North 1500 Road and would probably have lined the north side if not for the posted no-parking signs.

Weekends get really crazy, Schaake said. Cars are parked from the farm a third of a mile west to Noria Road and an equal distance to the east, she said. None of that was envisioned when a daughter’s 4-H project first got the family into the pumpkin business, which now occupies the fall schedules of the Schaakes, their four children and 10 grandchildren.

“It has grown far beyond our expectations,” she said, “Pumpkins are a consideration in everything we set up here anymore. It’s a fun project. We hope we provide fun entertainment for children and families.”

The modifications include the store near the parking lot, the displays of scarecrows and pumpkin varieties in the farm’s outbuildings, the painted jack-o’-lanterns on the faces of large fuel tanks, a hay-bale maze, playground and two sets of scales with signs informing customers of the pumpkins’ 47-cent-per-pound price (up from 10 cents per pound when the patch first opened).

With all the success of the pumpkin business, the family continues to grow corn and soybeans and have a cow/calf operation, Schaake said. The pumpkin patch season coincides with fall harvest, and while her husband and sons can run combines on weekdays, they, too, are pressed into pumpkin duty during the hectic weekends.

Although there’s no shortage at the farm, it wasn’t a great year for pumpkins, Schaake said. They like hot, dry weather with rain at the right time, such as when they blossom. What they were treated to since the Schaakes planted their 2016 crop in June was lots of wet weather and triple-digit temperatures during the August blossoming period.

As a result, the farm didn’t produce any pumpkins close to challenging the 550-pound monster that holds the farm’s record, Schaake said.

“The big ones take a lot of extra care,” she said. “My daughter Sheri (Schaake) takes care of the big ones. She babies them, talks to them and fertilizes them.”

The the pumpkin season is something she looks forward to arriving and, as the hectic days stretch on, abruptly ending, Schaake said. The patch’s last day will be Oct. 30, two days before the demand for pumpkins plummets with the passing of Halloween. Any pumpkins left in the patch become cattle fodder.

“We put an electric fence around the patch after Halloween and turn the cows on it,” she said. “The cows love pumpkins. I don’t know what nutritional value they get from them, but they love them. We throw the rotten ones over to them now. They hang out at the fence waiting for them.”