HOMER GLEN, Ill. — Pumpkin farms used to involve a simple hayride out to the field to pick a pumpkin. But today at farms like Bengtson’s Farm, it can be a full-day experience complete with animatronics, a petting zoo and delicious treats.
Bengtson’s Farm is a boy’s dream-come-true for Dan Bengtson, who sketched plans for his own farm after visiting his first pumpkin farm in Chicago as a teen.
“To me, it’s beautiful, the cornstalks, all the people that work here,” Bengtson, better known as Dan the Pumpkin Man, told WGN. “I never thought I’d own it.”
Thirty-six years after purchasing the old Homer Glen dairy farm when it appeared on the market, Bengtson’s is one of the largest in the state. “Every year it gets a little nicer,” Bengtson said.
The farm this fall expects to see about 200,000 visitors in a two-month span, and it’s no small order to get things ready each day. There’s a tractor-trailer shipment of 2,200 pumpkins and countless full garbage cans from the previous day to empty. In the petting zoo, hundreds of animals get cleaned and fed. And the farm’s rides feature characters and animatronics that need to be maintained. As visitors begin to arrive, crews are hard at work churning out more than 10,000 homemade apple cider doughnuts.
The farm is a family affair with Dan, his son Scott, daughter-in-law Susan and employees like Kathy Mrugala, who is now in her 34th year at the farm.
“It’s grown so much since I started,” Mrugala said.
Bengtson said there’s only two downsides to running a pumpkin farm: rainy days and the packing away of supplies for the winter.
The farm is located at 13341 W 151st St in Homer Glen. The farm’s website is at PumpkinFarm.com.