From agricultural education to preserving family history, the Lampe Heritage Farm and Pumpkin Patch is a labor of love.
Its proprietors are Don and Shelia Lampe, who delight in recreating a rural experience for people of all ages and backgrounds.
As the Lampes explained, although folks are drawn in by the delight found in pumpkins and other trappings of fall, what they come away with is a much broader agricultural experience.
It’s a tradition that reaches back to when the Lampes’ forebears would take people on hayrack rides from a pumpkin patch in Piqua to the CO-OP elevator, where they’d have an opportunity to learn about multiple types of crop harvests.
On the farm today, visitors can learn about organics, windbreaks, conservation/restoration, poultry eggs, irrigation, native grasses and much more.
This is so vital, the Lampes explained, given how “a lot of kids have no idea where their food is coming from,” that food is something “grown.”
Visitors also get an education in how soybeans and corn are grown, and get to check out equipment such as grain trucks and combines.
During fall, Don shows people how persimmons grow, and enjoys sharing legends about their weather-predicting abilities.
(This year, by the way, it’s all “spoons,” which spells a bitter cold winter full of snow.)
And of course, there are the pumpkins, on the farm itself and in an additional patch in Piqua, something Shelia said she’s been growing for 20 years.
“I love pumpkins,” she said. “I always have.”
Though this year’s yield is down a bit, “we still had a pretty decent crop,” she added, and have managed to navigate additional ag-tourism challenges brought about by COVID-19.
For instance, “normally we do you-pick,” she explained, but instead had to shift to offering a pre-picked selection.
Always keeping in sight an agricultural mission, visitors learn “the story of a pumpkin seed,” and read storyboards that narrate a pumpkin’s life from seed to vine to fruit.
All told, “we do as much as we can to bring people a farm experience,” Shelia explained.
And the price is right, for as Don pointed out, “You can leave without spending a nickel.”
AS FOR the “heritage” in Heritage Farm, the site itself has now been home to six generations, stretching back to at least 1901, and so is brimming with memories and stories.
