Jim Groverman (00:00.238)
The neat part for me is when I have somebody come up to me and they say, you know, I brought my kids here, my parents brought me here when I was a kid. So that's really rewarding.
Anne McGinty (00:19.234)
Welcome to the 19th episode of How I Build My Small Business, the show that is dedicated to sharing the insight that entrepreneurs have about how to start and grow small businesses. Join us as we unravel the stories behind their entrepreneurial journeys. I'm Anne McGinty, your host, and today we'll be chatting with Jim Groverman about what goes into prepping, planting, and operating a highly seasonal pumpkin patch.
Jim is the founder, owner, operator of the Petaluma Pumpkin Patch, a fall destination for many families in the Bay Area and a well -known agritourism enterprise in Sonoma County. Jim is a member of 4 -H, which promotes positive youth development, mentorship, and education, and FFA, the Future Farmers of America, an organization that encourages leadership in agriculture.
Not only does he run an incredibly successful pumpkin patch, but he is also in charge of managing over 800 acres of other land. His pumpkin patch has been featured in countless media, including Sonoma Magazine, KQED, Time Out, and was named as one of the top three pumpkin patches in the United States by the New York Times. You can find a link through to his business in the episode's description.
Anne McGinty (01:44.846)
Jim, thanks for coming on the show.
Jim Groverman
Thank you.
Anne McGinty
So can you tell us a little bit about how you got into selling pumpkins?
Jim Groverman
You know, I've always been an ag, fourth generation farmer right here in Sonoma County. When I was a kid, I started raising pumpkins probably when I was 10 or 12 years old. So I grew up on a small ranch, 50 acre ranch. My dad was a veterinarian, so we were always around animals and got a bachelor's in dairy science from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Used to shear sheep for a living.
and then started the pumpkin patch. And actually I got that idea from my grandmother's brothers who had a pumpkin patch in Sebastopol. So I really have them to thank for that. They quit growing pumpkins. And then a few years later, I decided to try my hand at pumpkin patch, which has been fairly successful for me over the last 32 years.
Anne McGinty
What was it that intrigued you the most?
Jim Groverman
Like I said, I liked the farming bit of it and there's a piece of ground next to the freeway that hadn't been farmed in years and years. Even the old timers don't really remember something happening with that piece of property. So I started farming it and then tried the pumpkins. What was it like at the beginning when you first got started? It started as a site. The first year was really challenging. That ground is a heavy clay soil, adobe soil, real hard to work.
There's kind of a saying that there's one day out of the year to work that kind of ground and generally that time is about midnight. Just really fought trying to get that ground worked up so I get a seed bed. Once we got that going, I tried sprinkle irrigation and with that clay ground, it didn't really work for me. So then I started with a drip irrigation, but very challenging first year as most businesses are. But if you never do anything, you never do anything wrong.
Anne McGinty
Right. So Where's your learning?
Jim Groverman
And I really scraped by when I first started buying a lot of used equipment and being very, very frugal with my money. I don't spend money on myself. I spend it on my business.
Anne McGinty
How much land does the pumpkin patch occupy?
Jim Groverman
Property is 15 acres.
Anne McGinty
And how much of it did you plant up that first season?
Jim Groverman
About four or five acres of pumpkins. I actually started in a partnership in Two-Rock growing pumpkins, but in the location I am now, just...
slowly year after year, start growing more pumpkins. A lot of people don't understand. They see me bringing pumpkins into the pumpkin patch. They go, oh yeah, you buy all those pumpkins. Well, as a rule, I grow all my pumpkins. For quite a few years, I was even supplying a lot of pumpkin patches throughout the Bay area. And then I also started a second pumpkin patch in Shellville at Viansa Winery, would grow ornamental corn over there. And then,
After I picked the ornamental corn, I would cut a path through the corn and just had a little bitty corn maze and I didn't know really what I had started upon. And the next year I did one that was not quite three acres at the Petaluma location. And from there it was just a huge hit. The corn maze is the number one draw. And the year I did that, the publicity was amazing. I had Channel 3 from Sacramento, flew a helicopter over.
landed it at the field, interviewed me. Several months later, I got that aerial picture. Somebody from Germany sent me that aerial picture, and the caption was actually in German. It had gone worldwide across the Associated Press wire.
Anne McGinty
That is incredible.
Jim Groverman
The corn maze really boosted the sales.
Anne McGinty
How exciting that must have been. Can you walk us through the different tasks that it requires for you to run a seasonal pumpkin patch?
Jim Groverman
It starts actually before I even do any ground work, I'll do soil sampling. My heart is really into the farming and I need to take care of the ground so I need to know what the soil has and what I need to add to it to make a good crop. So I do my soil samples, I'll send those away and then we'll add what nutrients and micronutrients that the ground needs. Get the ground worked up, try and get a nice seed bed and then once the crop's growing,
fertilize it if we need additional fertilizer. The setup for the corn maze and pumpkin patch usually starts about August. It takes a long time to set it up. And then also we have a lot of other farming enterprises that we're also taking care of at the same time. So we can't commit completely to that. The corn maze is planted in first part of July. The pumpkins are planted first part of June.
(06:22.638)
By the end of July, I try and have the corn maze cut and all the paths in. We have two towers that are ocean containers with stairs going up to them. Those have to be in place before the corn gets too tall. And then all the paths have to be leveled out. Everything is on drip irrigation. So before we even open, all those drip lines have to be pulled out. So we wind them up. We have a hydraulic set up on our tractor that spins them. Each drip line, which is 5 1⁄8 in diameter,
will water two rows of corn. The rows are 30 inches apart and the corn is planted seven or eight inches apart from each other in the row.
Anne McGinty
What goes into the planning of the corn maze?
Jim Groverman
There's one way in and one way out. Generally I do four hubs, which is you come into an area and there's a total of six paths. And in order to make it through the corn maze, you have to go into each corner of the corn maze through each one of the four hubs and pass by each one of the two towers in order to make it out.
Anne McGinty
And how long does it take to make it through?
Jim Groverman
You know, it takes, depending as if you're using a map or not, 20 minutes is real quick, generally about 45 minutes. For years, I've had this pumpkin patch and before I started opening at nighttime, I had a problem with people coming in and going through the corn maze at night when we were closed. So after thinking about that for a while, I thought, you know what, why not just open at nighttime? If people wanna come, that bad.
And the nighttime maze has been a huge success that really boosted the business.
Anne McGinty
I love how you decided to turn a problem into a profitable solution. That is really savvy.
Jim Groverman
It brings out a lot more challenges. You need to have light. So we have light towers set up. We need more people to kind of monitor people, people in the maze to help people out and kind of control people. But it definitely is a very popular evening outing for a lot of people.
Anne McGinty
What would you say you've learned the most in owner operating your business?
Jim Groverman
Dealing with the people. I grew up on a small ranch, around the cattle and on the horses. You learn how to deal with them through their body language. And I was really, really immersed in raising my animals. I was really in tune with them. I knew what was going on. With the people is a big learning curve. So dealing with not only your customers, but also working with your employees.
Anne McGinty (08:45.838)
These are such important skills and I think most entrepreneurs would empathize with the learning curve that you experienced. What has been the most difficult challenge you've experienced in your operations?
Jim Groverman
Staffing.
Anne McGinty
Oh yeah.
Jim Groverman
Yeah, because we're only open for six weeks and to try and find people to help us for those six weeks, it's challenging. A lot of my help is actually retired.
Anne McGinty
Oh, interesting. How big does your team get during the peak?
Jim Groverman
I have one and a half to two full -time guys all year long and then get maybe 10 people at a time working. Most are retired. They don't want to work all day long, which is fine. So they work a four hour shift and we have high school kids that will hire.
Anne McGinty
And what kind of fiscal impact does weather have on your season?
Jim Groverman
Weather's always been everything. That ground right there, as soon as it gets wet, it gets real sticky and you don't even want to walk on it.
Anne McGinty
Oh gosh.
Jim Groverman
It can make or break a season. Two years ago, we had 12 inches of rain in 24 hours and the field flooded. It was two feet deep in water. That was the end of the season. We lost the last 16 days of October.
Anne McGinty
Oh ouch.
Jim Groverman
I've had other years where I lost the last five weekend days of October. Nothing you can do about it. If it was sandy loam ground, it would be a lot easier. We could still open and operate.
We get a lot of people that come from a long ways away that want to go to the pumpkin patch and they find it closed and they got all upset. But there's nobody more than me that wants to keep it open.
Anne McGinty
But there's literally nothing you can do.
Jim Groverman
Nothing you can do. Yeah. Nothing.
Anne McGinty
It's not even really worth worrying about.
Jim Groverman
Right.
Anne McGinty
When it's outside of your hands like that.
Jim Groverman
Yes. Yes. There's somebody bigger than me that calls the shots.
Anne McGinty
So how many different revenue streams do you have at the pumpkin patch?
Jim Groverman
We have food vendors. We have a few crafts and then of course a sale with pumpkins and corn maize, and we also have a bounce house. And it's kind of funny because I fought the bounce house for years just because of my roots. I really wanted to keep at Ag and kind of resisted. And then finally I gave in and I'm glad I did.
Anne McGinty
Well, you noticed your customers needs and wants and filled those. So there's nothing wrong with that.
Jim Groverman
Right. I'm still trying to get that Ag education out there. This last year we had a set of calves, two calves that were bottle calves.
(11:13.806)
So we raised those there and I would take the one on halter, lead it around the pumpkin patch. It was just like a dog. Everybody came up and would pet her and I would answer questions. We have sheep there, we have goats there. My daughter had a cow and a calf. We brought them down there. We bring one of the horses down. We had some turkeys. Petaluma Farms supplies us with some chickens. So I'm trying to keep that ag element in there because as every year goes by,
people are getting further and further away from ag and they don't really know where their food's coming from.
Anne McGinty
Yeah. It reminds me of that Jamie Oliver episode where the kids say milk comes from the grocery store.
Jim Groverman
Yeah. We've had kids come and say, Oh, look at that sheep. And it's a goat. They don't know the difference. So we do a lot of school tours in the mornings during the week and we talk about the animals.
Anne McGinty
What can you tell us about your pumpkin production and sales?
Jim Groverman
Back when I was selling wholesale pumpkins, I had
customers that would buy 40, 50, 60 thousand pounds or more. Before the season started, I would come to them and I'd say, so what do you want? They'll say maybe we want a school size pumpkin. Okay, how many pounds? Do you want it shorter? Do you want it taller? Do you want it bigger around? Do you want a nice stem? Are you worried about the stem? By asking those questions, I would know what variety seed to plant. You can also adjust the size of a pumpkin by plant density.
Anne McGinty
Do you think someone without farming knowledge could start a successful pumpkin patch?
Jim Groverman
They could. If you can have somebody help you that has some kind of a farming background, that's definitely beneficial. You almost have to have somebody maybe come in as a partner or a consultant.
Anne McGinty
What do you think about for the future of your patch?
Jim Groverman
We're constantly trying to add, to give people a reason to come. One of the ones that we added a few years ago now is a corn box.
It's a lot of fun. It's 8 ,000 pounds of corn in a box and it's like a sandbox and the kids play in there, the adults play in there and we brought in a very nice outfit that did pony rides and that's a big draw too with kids.
Anne McGinty
It's a pretty big operation with something for everyone. I mean, I've personally seen the thousands and thousands in crowds that it draws. Why do you think Petaluma Pumpkin Patch has been so successful for you?
Jim Groverman
The advertising is... kind of the key. The reason I picked where I did is because 101 goes right by and you can't ask for better advertising than that.
Anne McGinty
Yeah, you literally can't miss it.
Jim Groverman
It's been known to cause a few traffic slowdowns that go all the way to Rohnert Park.
Anne McGinty
Oh my gosh, that's like eight miles away. So what else has made you so successful?
Jim Groverman
I put the hours in and I work. I put a lot of hours in and if anything, somebody might say I work too much.
Sundays I'll be out there working. I'll be running water during the summer. You have to put the hours in. When you have to make hay, and we also make hay, but when you have to make hay, you have to make hay. You cannot say, oh, I'll do it another time. Because when you're growing crops like I am, it's all time sensitive.
Anne McGinty
Right. And Halloween's not moving. So how old were you when you started this business?
Jim Groverman
28.
Anne McGinty
How did you secure the lease for the land? Did it have a for lease sign up?
Jim Groverman
Nothing. I just found out who the owner was and contacted them.
Anne McGinty
Wow. That's very resourceful. What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started?
Jim Groverman
I would probably try and hire more help to get stuff done so I could accomplish more stuff. I just didn't know any better.
Anne McGinty
How have you learned how to run a business?
Jim Groverman
I think it was pretty much on the fly. You learn a lot from the people that you're around and just talking to other people. Say what works for you? You know, how do you do this?
and I've made it work.
Anne McGinty
You sure have. What do you think every aspiring entrepreneur should know?
Jim Groverman
If you're going to start your own business, you really have to be dedicated. And if you want it to be successful, you have to put the time in, figure out what you want to do, write it down, set a timeline and follow that. Write the steps out what you want to do and what you want to get accomplished.
Anne McGinty
What's your favorite part of all of this?
Jim Groverman
The neat part for me is when I have somebody come up to me and they say, you know, I brought my kids here. My parents brought me here when I was a kid. So that's really rewarding.
Anne McGinty
And how do you like the lifestyle?
Jim Groverman
I really like the lifestyle. I have a 13 year old daughter. She has her own egg business. She has for about three years. So she'll contact neighbors and we'll deliver eggs to them. A year ago, I got her started doing QuickBooks for eggs. She keeps track and buys her.
(15:58.19)
grain for her chickens and her egg cartons. She has her own label for her egg cartons. I think it's a good way to bring up kids. So, you know, it's taught a lot about how to work hard and responsibility is huge.
Anne McGinty
It's huge. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your insight with us.
Jim Groverman
Absolutely.
Anne McGinty
If you've made it this far, as always, thanks for being here.
Today's key takeaways.
If you never do anything, then you'll never do anything wrong, but making mistakes is an excellent way to learn.
Even if you're not a farmer, you can start a successful pumpkin patch, but you should probably partner up with someone who has experience with farming to handle that side of the business.
Look at prime locations. Is there an underutilized piece of land that has great visibility from a well -traveled highway that you can turn into a business? This type of visibility is incredible advertising. Even if there isn't a for lease sign, you can try to figure out who owns the land and find a way to get in touch.
Problems are opportunities. If you face a problem, see if you can think of a way to create a profitable solution.
Listen to your customers' needs and wants, and be willing to adapt your business model to meet those.
Be willing to put the hours in and work hard. If you don't know how to do something, look for someone who does and ask them what works for them.
If there's something you want to accomplish, figure out what it is you want to do. Write it down, write down the steps, set a timeline, and follow it.
And if you're a parent listening in, think of ways you can teach your kids to develop a strong work ethic by taking on more responsibilities.
I release episodes once a week, so come back and check it out. Have a great day!