Putting up the pumpkin patch

Kent and Stacy Hessenthaler are long-time Thermopolis figures known for their sweet corn and pumpkins. Kent retired from teaching high school math and Spanish about five or six years ago. “Time runs together and as you get older, you know that,” said Kent.

However, more changes are coming for the Hessenthalers as they have decided to stop planting pumpkins, but they will continue farming their sweet corn. 

Kent explained, “My wife hasn’t liked doing pumpkins for a long time. Because she wants to go, maybe travel someplace in October and see the leaves and things. And we’ve got the pumpkins. You’re always kind of tied to the house. We also have a constant battle with deer. Like eating the pumpkins. If we walk on the pumpkin patch, you see all over the place deer eating pumpkins.”

In order to deter the deer from entering the pumpkin fields, Kent uses a series of electric fences. Kent said, “I’ve got an eight-foot wood wire fence across the north, across the west and down the south, and even across the highway frontage.” 

However, Kent is more creative in the electric fence design. Kent said, “I put two fences, one at about 3 to 4 feet high, then move maybe five feet away from the front and put a fence about a foot and a half high… And that really seems to slow them down. If you have a fence just straight up and down, then they come and hop over. When, you have them six feet apart they’ll come and put their nose on the first one to get shocked and they don’t. It’s a little harder for them.”

The Hessenthalers have been producing pumpkins for the past 30 to 35 years. Each year they grow between 500 to 1,000 pumpkins totaling about 6,000 pounds of produce. 

Regarding their corn farming, Kent said, “I started in 1986, the first in sweet corn here. So that’s been 36 years. And that’s a long time.” Kent estimates that over all that time he had produced between one to two million ears of corn.

“It’s good exercise. It’s a lot of work,” said Kent. He goes on to describe the process. “You’ve got to prepare your soil this spring. I usually start planting the corn about the last week of April or the first week of May, depending on the weather. And then as soon as it germinates as soon as corn comes up, it’s about two weeks in May. Then I’ll plant another planting. And when they come up with another plant, and by the time we get into June, it only takes about a week for them to germinate. I usually try to plant my last plant between the 1st of July and the 4th of July.” 

Essentially Kent staggers out the planting over time so that he doesn’t have too much crop too soon and they will be too mature. The Hessenthalers then sell the sweet corn at either their farm or locally at Mack’s Market. Kent added, “We try to sell mostly through Mack’s just because it’s more convenient for us… When people come out here to get a dozen ears of corn, they want to visit. And usually, that’s really a busy time.” 

The Hessenthalers sell about 90% of their sweet corn at Mack’s Market.

When asked about Kent’s personal value in selling and growing the corn and the pumpkins, he said, “You know, that’s a good question, I think, to be honest with you, all the years I taught math and the secondary level, you almost never got any positive feedback from students. High school kids don’t say ‘thank you’ very often, they will occasionally, but pretty rare. When you raise the corn or the pumpkins, everybody that comes and buys them, they say thank you so much. This is really wonderful, and it’s appreciated. And I think that’s part of it. You know, there’s a financial reason for it. You know, it’s a portion of our income, not a huge portion, but it’s a portion.”

Kent described the potential response of the public from their end on pumpkin farming and said, “I’m sure next year if we don’t do pumpkins, there’ll be people complaining. They’ll be disappointed. They’re going to be dissappoited.”

Kent added, “And I know when the day comes that we can no longer have the health to raise the sweet corn, I’m sure the people in town will be sorely disappointed that we don’t have it.”

As the Hessenthalers are deciding on how to change their plans, they are exploring what to do next. Kent’s wife Stacy said, “I just love to travel and I really love fall. I like to go to Vermont, New York, Boston. I mean, all the beautiful places that I love, waterfalls. I would like to chase waterfalls. You know, I’ll go around the waterfalls.”

Stacy added, “All I know is this. We’ve been so busy, you know, and it was kind of my idea to give up the pumpkins. And so I just want to because life is short, and my mother always wanted to travel and she couldn’t because she got sick. And so it’s kind of like, do it when you can.”

Kent also said, “She likes to go up to see Glacier National Park, Montana. Maybe even go back to the Midwest and see, or back on the east coast of Maine or so. I don’t know if we’ll ever do that, but she would like to travel more and not be tied down.”

Kent and Stacy moved to Thermopolis in 1984. He said, “It’s been a long adventure.” Stacy added, “We love the community. I think we get along well with the community. It’s a nice place to live in.” 

Regarding their farming, Stacy said, “We have met a lot of different people. We have families that come from Casper every year and they get together with other children… I’ll miss that. You know the people that I’ve met over the years. I just think we’ve met a lot of nice people. You know, you look around the world and you always see the negativity of what’s going on in the world.” 

Kent added, “With the pumpkins, the sweet corn. We see the positive.”

Stacy also said, “You see the very positive, the happy faces, the kids laughing and enjoying exploring the yard, not wanting to leave. Because I think there’s so much fun stuff to do, so that’s fun because I love children, so it’s been fun to watch.”