John Ackerman of Ackerman Family Farms is gearing up for another big fall of offering a wide variety of pumpkins and family-friendly activities for visitors to their 30-acre site just east of Morton.
“We’ve got all the usual suspects. We’ve got a lot of pumpkins, some new varieties this year,” said Ackerman. “We’ve got the animals that we had last year. We’re pleased with our corn maze, and the gift shop is getting full.”
Ackerman said the seasonal business will open Aug. 27 and run through Halloween.
But this season will be a little different than previous ones, after Ackerman recently announced the farm will close the public side of its operations as of Nov. 1 — after 26 years.
Ackerman said he and his wife Eve came to the difficult decision with each other in mind.
“To be honest, I’m not getting any younger, and I tracked my hours couple years ago and I realized I’d put in five consecutive 100-hour work weeks, and my wife did pretty much the same,” he said.
“Also, we’re always worried that, ‘what if one of us had a health problem?’ We couldn’t do this without each other. So we want to go out on a high note while things are going well, and it seemed like this was the right time.”
John Ackerman said those factors are among a “lot of different reasons” for discontinuing the hand-picked pumpkin sales, gift shop and other attractions.
“Our costs have gone up quite a bit, our labor costs have gone up and it’s starting to cut into the bottom line,” he said.
Ackerman said he plans to continue growing pumpkins and other agricultural crops in the years ahead.
“I won’t probably raise the decorative pumpkins, but I will be glad to get contracts — because I have in the past with, say, Libby’s — for the processing pumpkins,” he said. “We just are going to close down the retail end of things. I’ll be more than happy, as we continue farming, to grow certain specialty crops under contract.”
When asked if he’s had time to reflect on what Ackerman Family Farms has meant to the Morton community and beyond for more than a quarter century, Ackerman graciously flipped the question.
“Part of the answer has to be the amazing things that community has done for us. We’ve been so blessed; people have just been just fantastic to us,” he said. “We have the best demographics of customers. Gosh, we get animal lovers and nature lovers and families and grandparents. We get foodies and people who are advocates for farming or interested in farming and want to learn about it.
“We’re going to miss the customers, and we’re going to miss the employees. We’ve had over 400 young men and women who’ve worked for us over the last quarter century, and man, we’ve been their friends. We’ve been mentors. We’ve watched them grow. Some of them have brought back their kids to farm, to visit.”
He said all the hours they’ve put into the pumpkin farm have been highly rewarding.
“It’s been just surprisingly wonderful,” he said, “beyond what we probably expected when we first started doing this.”
