Retired Adair County educator starts Macksburg pumpkin farm

Mike and Teresa Thompson have turned their Macksburg homestead into a fun take on the season of autumn for the entire family through a pumpkin patch they’re running there.

Thompson’s Fall Festival opened the weekend of Sept. 24-25 and is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Oct. 30. Its location is 1360 290th Street, Macksburg.

Teresa retired last year from a career of over 30 years in education at Orient-Macksburg.

“Last fall when I announced that I was going to retire people asked me what I was going to do next,” Teresa said. “I knew what I wasn’t going to do, but I said I wanted to start a pumpkin patch.”

The Thompsons hadn’t ever grown pumpkins, let alone hundreds of them.

But away they went this spring, planting about 100 hills of pumpkins. Each hill yields about five pumpkins, the Thompsons said. They also planted gourds. Teresa said they waited to commit to opening a pumpkin patch until the pumpkins, which cover about a half-acre, were growing.

The pumpkin patch idea also gave the Thompsons opportunity to clean up parts of their farmstead they hadn’t touched very much in the time they had lived there. A circle drive area was cleaned out and became an activity area. A machine shed normally used for other functions on the farm also became an activity area where kids can play in a corn sandbox, go down a slide or pet and feed a goat.

“My first thought was to make it a little more of a fall carnival. Some of these things are pretty traditional for pumpkin farms and others aren’t,” Teresa said. “Most all of this was done after state fair.”

The Thompsons have had food trucks both of the weekends they’ve been open thus far, The Corn Dog Caravan from Fontanelle the first weekend and Zipp’s Pizzaria from Adair the second weekend.

Crowds have come to enjoy the fun, and they hope more do as the season goes on. The Thompsons are excited to partner with high school students at Creston, Orient-Macksburg, and possibly Winterset, to give them hands-on learning opportunities at the pumpkin farm through school-to-work programs and other avenues.

“When things were growing, I enjoyed that part. I really like working outside, baking, and the kids being around, doing activities,” Teresa said. “I’ve got some school groups coming out, so it has really worked well for me that I can still be around kids, school and education while being here at my own home.”