Andrea Drost's mom, Deb, drives an Early Childhood Family Education group to the pumpkin patch. Andrea is sitting on the steps of the trailer and helps children pick out pumpkins.
By Sara Quam
She's not quite a pumpkin fairy, but Andrea Drost, 15, helps keep Rock County stocked with the seasonal favorite.
The Luverne High School sophomore started growing pumpkins when her brother, Tim, was born. Her dad, Gary, wanted to give her something to keep busy with, and somehow, the pumpkins stuck.
Thirteen years after her first miniature pumpkin patch, Andrea now harvests two-thirds of an acre and is a major wholesaler of the produce locally.
Along with selling the pumpkins, she's turned them into an educational opportunity.
The patch itself, along with group tours and a Powerpoint presentation, are a Future Farmers of America project for Andrea. She has to document the success of her pumpkins in detailed costs and work analyses.
The work includes planting pumpkins with a corn planter and tilling between the rows twice a week. She also puts in time hoeing between individual plants to keep weeds out of the way.
Tours and pumpkin shoppers stop by the farm to get their harvests for the season. Early Childhood Family Education has had many group tours this fall, and Andrea leads them through a short educational presentation on how pumpkins grow from seeds to plants.
During one recent tour, Andrea included the children in the discussion on pumpkins. After showing them a picture of orange-colored blossoms, she asked, "And you know what they turn into?" The preschoolers all jumped in to shout "pumpkins."
Throughout her years raising the pumpkins, she has put aside profits for college savings. But thatÕs only after she donates 10 percent to her church.
"I keep 25 percent for fun, teen-age stuff," she said.
Even though Andrea has collected money from her crops, she is getting more out of it than that. "It's so fun to see the kids' reactions. Something so simple makes them so happy," she said. "I actually have more fun seeing the pumpkins grow and watching the kids have so much fun."
And she's learning about more than just yields. She said, "A lot of what I'm learning is that hard work, in the end, pays off. When it's 90 degrees in the summer and youÕre working in the field, you kind of wonder if it's worth it, but it is."