Once upon a time, a young man with the last name, SCHAAKE, met the woman of his dreams who would soon help him run his dad's farm at the young ages of 18 and 19. Little did they know that the two would raise four children that along the way would help to build what we know as Schaake's Pumpkin Patch.

 

The farm was set on about 100 acres on the Kansas River, able to withstand the production of corn crops, wheat crops, and milk cows. Work on the farm meant using a "two-row planter and two-row cultivator", as Larry says. With the idea of bringing awareness to agriculture, the pumpkin patch started as a 4-H project that consisting of a parked pickup off the side of the highway in a parking lot. This idea slowly expanded to what we know as a small - but large part of the 1,400-acre farm production. It came to be a 50-year adventure involving the Schaake family and all the grandkids, the communities of Eudora, Lawrence, and its surroundings to create a long-standing family tradition.