Sugar Grove Pumpkin Farm marks 10 years in business

Halloween pumpkins no longer are just big and orange, rounded and perfect to be carved into a grinning gap-toothed jack-o’-lantern.

There’s Knuckleheads and Warty Goblins – the kind with the weird bumps – and Cinderella’s Carriage, a wide, deep orange heirloom variety.

Starting their 10th season, Mikaya and Dustin Huggins grow more than 100 varieties of pumpkins on their Sugar Grove Pumpkin Farm, 4S041 Merrill Road, Sugar Grove.

“We have thousands of pumpkins,” Mikaya Huggins said. She is the general manager while her husband is in charge of field operations.

“We have Blue Doll with exaggerated lobes and it’s powder blue,” she said. “It’s beautiful with a quirky stem. We have Flat White Boer pumpkins for stacking. They’re very squished.”

There’s also the standard big orange jack-o’-lanterns with nice heavy stems.

“We have some massive ones that are 60-plus pounds,” she said. “The largest one currently is 125.8 pounds. We’re actually raffling that off, two bucks a ticket. We’re doing the drawing Oct. 13.”

They have a website and are on Facebook and Instagram, but that’s about as technical as they get.

If you want to buy a raffle ticket, you have to go to the farm and buy it, cash or credit card.

The farm offers activities for children age 12 and younger, including the straw mound and tunnel, witch hat ring toss, tug-of-war and potato sack races. The corn maze is for all ages.

The couple fell into the business by happenstance.

“It was exceptionally random,” Huggins said. “My husband and I lived out in Lee and his best friend offered us the pumpkin farm (to rent). ... They told us, ‘Do whatever you want with it.’ We said yes. We had never farmed before. ... We accepted their incredible offer.”

While pregnant with their second child, Huggins spent that whole first winter researching and studying how to run a pumpkin farm.

Their baby was born six days after they opened for the first season.

“That first year, we harvested about five acres. It was super small,” Huggins said. “The next few years, we ironed out little details, things that worked and didn’t work.”

Now they use two of the five acres for pumpkins, the other three for activities and they rent an additional 22 acres.

They sell pumpkins on-site, wholesale to Sugar Grove Ace and Amazon.

Her husband has a full-time job at the Sugar Grove Township Road District, so he hires help for harvesting the pumpkins.

She homeschooled their three sons until this year. They started public school in fourth and fifth grade and kindergarten.

“Whatever grows, we are grateful for,” Huggins said. “We are at the mercy of nature like anybody else who has field crops. We cross our fingers and hope.”

The farm is open from noon to 6 p.m Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday and is closed Monday and Tuesday.

More information is available at www.sugargrovepumpkinfarm.com.