Work and fun go hand-in-hand for Mark and Nancy Kooima and their kids.

The Kooima family operates Pumpkins on Garfield, a farm selling pumpkins, gourds, broom corn, Indian corn, corn stalks, peppers, onions, potatoes, green beans, cabbage, cauliflower and tomatoes. Ingredients to make homemade salsa are a specialty. Customers can pick their own pumpkin straight out of the patch or choose from about 1,000 displayed inside. There are about 100 varieties available.

Their 10-acre corn maze is a centerpiece to a lot of the fun. Visitors search for 10 stations and a special hidden object. The hidden object has included everything from a pair of cement legs sticking out of the ground and a toilet filled with cement to a boat and Minions.

The maze has three difficulty levels. The easiest takes about 40 minutes, medium is an hour, and the hardest is one-and-a-half hours.

Some groups tackle the maze in the dark with flashlights, followed by a bonfire.

There’s a pumpkin weight-guessing contest – if you guess right, you get to take the pumpkin home (even if you don’t really want a 90-pound pumpkin!). This will be the fourth year the Kooimas have had a family contest to raise the biggest pumpkin.

“We have some Facebook fans who really enjoy the big reveal I do week- by-week,” Mark said. So far, the biggest pumpkin has been 190 pounds.

Sweet Corn Is A Family Tradition

Before the fun begins, there’s a lot of work. Mark and Nancy’s children are the planting, weeding and harvesting crew. “We've got five kids and they've been pretty instrumental in this whole deal. They put in a lot of work through the summers,” Mark said. Their children are:

• Connor, 21, a senior at Dordt University, working on a degree in agricultural plant science.

• Ethan, 19, a sophomore at Dordt, double majoring in finance and marketing, with a minor in accounting.

• Gracia, 16, a junior at Trinity Christian High School in Hull.

• Jolie, 13, an eighth grader.

• Troy, 8, a third grader. Both Jolie and Troy attend Protestant Reformed Christian School in Hull.

In addition to growing pumpkins and gourds for sales in the fall, the family grows and sells sweet corn and produce in Rock Valley and Sioux Center in July and August. According to Mark, “Spring is busy because we're getting basically everything set up, whether it's a sweet corn patch, a pumpkin patch, or the three large gardens back there. It's a constant battle keeping the weeds out. If we’re going to take a family vacation, that happens in June, the only time we’re not totally tied down.” From mid-July to the end of August, the Kooima kids are up around 5:30 a.m. to pick corn and then get to Sioux Center and Rock Valley early to begin sales.

In a way, the family inherited the 30-year sweet corn business of Nancy’s family and the hobby sales done by Mark’s nephews and nieces. “In the end, we’re selling ‘Kooima Corn’ in Rock Valley and selling both ‘Kooima Corn’ and ‘Bleyenberg Corn’ in Sioux Center. We still get a few checks made out to Bleyenberg

Sweet Corn every year,” he said. Over the years, they added produce to their sales and have a loyal following in both towns. “Our kids always get a kick out of seeing our regular customers every year. And the regulars love talking to the kids,” she said.

Nancy is the daughter of Alvin and Betty Bleyenberg, who farmed west of Sioux Center. She was the tenth of 15 children. “We grew up raising broilers – I can hardly eat chicken to this day.” A big part of being a Bleyenberg was selling sweet corn adjacent to Central Park in Sioux Center. Sweet corn sales helped the family pay tuition at Christian schools. In fact, all of the Bleyenberg children had to pay their individual tuition during their senior year at Western Christian.

Mark grew up on the farm of his parents, Tim and the late Clarine Kooima, who had four sons and two daughters. “My mom passed away a year ago in August. She instilled in me a love for all things gardening. I helped her care for a large garden growing up. Dad enjoys driving behind the shed and checking everything out almost weekly and visiting with us when he catches us in the pumpkin or sweet corn patch.” Mark’s brothers, Steve and Kevin, operate the family farm today. The next generation is also coming on. Steve lives on the original home site, which is adjacent to Pumpkins on Garfield; and Kevin lives a mile north.

Both Mark and Nancy attended Protestant Reformed Christian School in Hull and graduated from Western Christian High School. After high school, she worked a variety of jobs. Mark has a degree in agricultural business from Dordt University. During college, he interned at Farmers Elevator in Doon and then worked there for 20 years, starting as an agronomist and applicator.

Mark and Nancy married in 2001. They lived in Hull for about five years before moving to their current home in 2008 when his parents moved to town. In 2019, Mark went into a partnership with Theo Bartman of Rock Valley to own and operate Precision Ag & Seed, building on the Pioneer dealership previously owned by Elmer Boon. “Theo and I have a good give and take. He farms with his dad and does some custom spraying. There are times when he's pretty tied up and other times I'm pretty tied up with this.”

Pumpkin Business Progression

When the family still lived in Hull, they started growing pumpkins in the corner of a 20-acre field Mark had farmed for many years. The large, pie-type pumpkins were sold to local grocery stores. “I've always enjoyed gardening. Even as a kid I was growing pumpkins.”

After they moved to the acreage on Garfield Avenue, they first sold pumpkins at the end of their driveway right from the back of a hay rack. Twelve years ago, they ratcheted up the scale of the operation, building the shed from which they operate now. The corn maze started the next year when Mark was able to plot the layout via GPS. After the corn comes up, he begins to mow the trail (which takes about four hours). Next year, he’s hoping to save a lot of repeated mowing by plotting the layout right into his brother’s corn planter.

When the summer sweet corn sales end, the family has only about two weeks before diving into pumpkin sales, which begins the weekend after Labor Day. “Before opening, we do a massive cleaning of the shed. It’s a big job to turn the shed into a retail space for two months and get the corn maze set up,” he said.

While Mark and Nancy’s family is working through their busy season, they count on family members to keep the fun rolling along. His brother, Glen, his wife, Kris, and her sister Stacy, pull a prank on them every year. “One year, when we were still selling from the driveway, they stacked all the pumpkins by our front door so when we opened it, all the pumpkins fell in. Then they wrote ‘We were here’ with gourds on the driveway,” said Nancy.

“Another time they came on a Saturday night. The next morning, we went outside and they had every picnic table turned upside down; they had pumpkins on our roof; and they had put pumpkins in the portapotty,” she said.

The Hull address of Pumpkins on Garfield is 2846 Garfield Avenue (three miles south of Doon).