Kelly Schultz is an antique seller who made a risky purchase three decades ago.
About 33 years ago, Kelly Schultz told his friends and family that he was going to open a pumpkin farm.
“Everybody laughed at me,” he said in a new interview with CNBC Make It.
The endeavor was outside Schultz’s area of expertise. He was a second-generation antiques seller and didn’t know anything about farming. He bought the small farm in Clarence, New York, anyway.
Schultz, 74, now runs The Great Pumpkin Farm, located about 15 miles northeast of Buffalo. More than 100,000 people visit the seasonal attraction each fall.
The farm generated $2 million in revenue in 2025, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. It operates for just seven weeks a year.
This year’s season runs from September 19 through October 31. Pumpkins are only part of the draw. Visitors can ride a pumpkin-themed train, enter pie-eating contests or explore a five-acre corn maze. Weekend admission is $20, though some activities, including the corn maze, cost extra.
Schultz had the idea to open a farm of his own after visiting a crowded pumpkin patch in upstate New York in the early 1990s. He observed a simple operation with “muddy parking lots” and “not a whole lot of restrooms,” but there were still “a zillion people” browsing and buying pumpkins anyway.
“I looked around, and I said, ‘I could do this, better than this,’” Schultz said.
When the former cattle farm next to his antique store hit the market in 1993, Schultz bought the 85-acre property for about $650,000, intent on transforming it into a pumpkin farm .
Source link
