ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The Halloween season is upon everyone, and people now have a new spot to find their jack-o-lantern.
Cake N Cow Farms, located at 583 Road 24 in Hugoton, recently announced the opening of its pumpkin patch. The patch’s official grand opening took place Saturday, and as owners Holly Owens and Matt James tell it, the project has been a long time coming.
“I met Matt about six and a half years ago, and I ultimately moved out to the farm. We knew we wanted to do something cool because there’s a lot of land and space around the house, and we knew we wanted to bring something to the community since there’s not really a lot to do,” Owens said. “We’d talked about it early on and started cleaning up around the property and planting some new trees and picking out where we wanted the actual pumpkin patch area. We spent a bunch of time cleaning that up, and we’ve known this whole time we wanted something big, and it was a few years ago when we started acquiring some animals and building other things throughout the years as we could afford to do it. We built the horse barn, a huge chicken barn and other animal pens, the greenhouses and some other things in preparation of having everything open to the public. We’re still building some things, and our big thought was we had to get open in order to continue to build on to what we’re already doing. As much work as we’ve done, and as great as it all looks, what we have right now is just a start. Earlier this year was when we officially decided we wanted to open the pumpkin patch this fall for the public – that is a conversation we’d had in prior years, but circumstances were more favorable this year for us to finally do it. For me, taking care of the pumpkin patch has almost become a full-time job, and now that we’re getting to the point of officially opening, it’s really exciting. And eventually, we could see this getting even bigger and offering space for parties and other events. With the reactions we’re getting from people on social media and in person, that tells us there’s a massive need in the area for this type of family entertainment, and we want to provide that in our way.”
“And there’s still come cleanup going on – it seems like every time I go out to the pumpkin patch I find something I missed that should have already gone to the landfill,” James added. “Not only have we been working on all of this, but we’re also running a regular farm and taking care of animals and crops and all of that. It’s definitely taken a lot of time and work, and there are times when a couple of the other farm employees will help out if there’s some of that needed.”
Both agreed they could not be more excited for the patch to finally be open for the public.
“I’m really excited about families being able to come out and spend the day at the farm and create those memories with their children. I want to be able to be part of that, and that’s also part of my baking – I love being creative and all of that, but I still get to be part of birthdays and weddings and other big events like that,” Owens said. “I feel like having the pumpkin patch is going to be about the same and every fall, families will create memories, which will be great. It’s also kind of personal for me because before my first husband passed away in a car accident, we took my son to the Apple Hutch in Plains, and that was a fall thing I absolutely loved doing. That’s something we want to help create for families in the area. Right now, we’re excited to have the pumpkin patch, but I can absolutely see it turning into a Christmas lights display with cookies and hot cocoa and Santa Claus and all of that, and maybe even Easter egg hunts and things like that. Another goal is to build a huge barn and commercial kitchen (for me) for people to rent for weddings and other big events. We’ve got to get open and get people out here, and that will allow us to continue building on. We had a videographer out recently who flew a drone over the farm and took some footage and created a video ad for us, and it made me pretty emotional since we’ve been working on all of this for so, so long by this point. There are so many projects we do on almost an annual basis for the farm, and it’s definitely taken a lot of grit and determination and work to get to where we are.”
“And we’ve been talking about all of this for the past five or six years, and there are probably some of our friends who are slightly tired of hearing about it and still wondering if we’re ever going to open,” James added with a laugh. “I’m really looking forward to seeing the actual payoff and seeing the farm actually become something cool and something for the public. It’ll be great seeing those tangible results and seeing people actually out here. We are so grateful everything turned out well in terms of the weather – we ended up getting a lot of rain, and for the most part, there wasn’t a lot of blistering heat. We were worried we might not even have a pumpkin crop because we didn’t plant until just after the 4th of July since we were also busy with harvest and other farm work, but thankfully, everything came up like we wanted. We’ve even got some pumpkins well more than 100 pounds out there, and we’ve definitely got a wide variety for people to choose from. We also hauled in multiple varieties from a wholesale farm that specializes in pumpkins, and we even took a bunch from a farm in Optima, Okla. because they were overrun by weeds and weren’t able to do what they wanted with them.”
The Cake N Cow Farms pumpkin patch will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. every Saturday and 1 to 7 p.m. every Sunday for the rest of the month, and Owens said there could be some surprises later on this year at the farm. And with this being the patch’s inaugural year, Owens and James said they are not 100 percent certain what to expect.
“We’re hoping to see many families come out, and I’ve got several schools booked for field trips already. We’re hoping everyone who comes out enjoys a nice day at the farm and finds their perfect Halloween pumpkin and has fun with the games and everything else we have,” Owens said. “There might be a few bumps here and there, but I think people will be happy to have something like this relatively close by. I think people will be surprised by how much there is to do and look at on the farm, and they’ll be surprised by how much time they end up spending here because of that. We’ve got baby kangaroos, emus, etc. along with the more ‘traditional’ farm animals like the pigs and sheep and all of them. For people who want to visit, they will need to reserve their tickets at cakencowfarms.com, and that has all the information people will need. There’s a page on that site where people can pick what date they want to come out, and we definitely encourage reserving tickets ahead of time in order to make the check-in process easier and quicker.”
“I actually have a feeling some parents will hate us because their children will be pleading to come back and see all the cool animals,” James added with a laugh. “These are animals not everyone gets to see on a regular basis, and we want people to actually be excited to come and see us. Not very many children grow up on farms anymore, so they don’t get too much experience with animals and tractors and growing their own food, so this is something that’s unique even to people from this area. We’re only 12 miles from Liberal and 18 miles from Hugoton, and we’ve already had people comment how cool it is to have such an experience. And it’s not just a big field of pumpkins, we’ll also have games and hayrides and other activities like that for them to do. We also have a storefront that will sell gift items, and people will also be able to hang out in our greenhouses.”
