Kansas Profile - Now That's Rural - Doug and Brenda Renyer - Renyer's Pumpkin Farm

By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.

What are your favorite colors? Today we’ll meet a young Kansas family that says their favorite colors are orange and green -- at least in the fall. That’s not because they are the colors of their favorite football team or their favorite school, but because orange and green are the colors of pumpkins. This family is using pumpkins as the basis for a successful agritourism enterprise in rural Kansas.

Brenda and Doug Renyer operate Renyer’s Pumpkin Farm near Wetmore, Kansas.

Doug Renyer grew up on a dairy farm in the region. He now works for the Wenger company in Sabetha. Brenda is originally from Wellsville. After graduating from Emporia State, she got her first teaching job at Sabetha where she met and married Doug.  They now have a son Clay.

In 1990, Doug had purchased a farm near Wetmore. The farm is located in a neighborhood known locally as Granada. Granada is not an incorporated town, but at one point it was a Pony Express stop and had a mercantile, blacksmith shop, and even a hotel.  Doug says, “When the railroad came to Wetmore, Granada became a ghost town.” Some old buildings remain, plus the Renyer’s home, a rental house, and an old schoolhouse which was converted to a residence.

The Renyers thought about how they could utilize this rural setting and decided to establish Renyer’s Pumpkin Farm. Brenda says, “We threw some pumpkin seeds in the ground, but we were just playing at it. We thought that someone might come by and buy some.”

Then the Renyers met another Kansas farm family named the Walters. The Walters encouraged Doug and Brenda to attend the convention of the North American Farmers’ Direct Marketing Association. It was a turning point. Brenda says, “For three days, you are traveling with at least 50 other agritourism people, and going to all sorts of successful farms. Everyone is talking about what works, and what doesn’t, and you get to see how it can really be done.”

The Renyers came home and put those ideas to work.  Today, the Renyer’s Pumpkin Farm attracts more than 4,000 people during five weekends in the fall.

Brenda says, “We encourage families to come spend a day at the farm.”  The farm offers not only a six-acre “pick your own pumpkin field,” but a remarkable variety of other attractions for families. These include a corn cannon, hayrides, two-acre corn maze, pumpkin train, grain bin play area, pumpkin slingshot, animal area, duck races, playground, tube slide, straw bale maze, scarecrows, John Deere trike track, family photo area, picnic space, food, and more.

Brenda has always enjoyed crafts. In fact, her Christmas ornament design won second place in a Country Marketplace magazine contest. So Brenda produces and markets unique craft items plus potted mums and fresh and dried gourds in an old garage that has been converted to a gift shop.

Sure enough, this was a great way to utilize their rural setting. After all, Wetmore is a rural town of 355 people. Then the Renyers point out that they actually live at Granada.  Counting three members of the Renyer family, three residents in the rental house, and the gentleman who lives in the schoolhouse, that gives Granada a population of seven. Now, that’s rural.

“This has been great for our family,” Brenda says, “because it has allowed me to be home with my son. And it has taught him about the importance of a work ethic and responsibility.”

Thanks to Brenda’s creative eye, the farm is well decorated using those pumpkin colors of orange and green. For more information, go to www.renyerspumpkinfarm.com.

What are your favorite colors? For the Renyers, they are those pumpkin colors of orange and green, which one finds all around the Renyer’s Pumpkin Farm. We salute Doug and Barb Renyer for making a difference with their agritourism innovation. As Doug says, “You have to make it orange to get the green.”

And there’s more. Remember the Walters family who encouraged the Renyers along the way? We’ll visit their agritourism enterprise next week.

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The mission of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development is to enhance rural development by helping rural people help themselves. The Kansas Profile radio series and columns are produced with assistance from the K-State Research and Extension Department of Communications News Unit. A photo of Ron Wilson is available at  http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/news/sty/RonWilson.htm.  Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at http://www.kansasprofile.com. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/huckboyd/.

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