This year, Vala’s Pumpkin Patch and Apple Orchard are celebrating their 40th year in business. Originally started by Tim Vala as a you pick strawberry farm where he rented the land to own from a retiring farmer after he couldn’t find a job as a history teacher, the farm quickly transitioned into pumpkins and most recently has added an apple orchard to their vast property and fall themed fun.
“My dad was one of the pioneers of agritainment back when he started,” said Kirsten Vala Fong, the oldest of the three Vala sisters, and President of Food and Beverage as well as the director of Digital Marketing and Social Media. “There’s these trade organizations we go to in the off season, where you meet up with farms across the country.”
This industry has helped keep many family farms alive throughout the United States, where most farms are owned by mega-corporations and farming conglomerates. This is something that has kept Vala’s unique over the years as they have stayed family owned and they continue to inspire, educate, and expand.
“My dad always had a lot of confidence and really believed in the business from the very beginning,” Fong said. “My mom believed in him too, but she was much more practical and more worried about “how are we going to sustain our family and get people to college.”’
What some people may not know is that what is now the haunted house at Vala’s, was once a working farmhouse and was original to the 16 acres of property when Tim Vala started the farm, originally renting the land to buy what is now a 450 acre farm..
“It’s so cool that it was a farmhouse because I had a friend in high school whose grandpa was the farmer that we bought the house from and his mom had grown up in that house,” Fong said.
Additionally, the haunted house is one of five buildings original to the property, the others built specifically for Vala’s or saved and restored from other farms.
“The harvest bard, where we have donuts now, is original, the dairy barn is original, the spook shed was the old shed where they’d put their tractors and the last original building is the storybook barn,” Fong said.
A newer area that many folks may recognize is the Pie Barn and chicken themed area around it.
“In 2014 we scootched the corn maze over, and put the pie barn there,” Fong said. “And then it just seemed the most natural place to expand was next to the pie barn, so we put up a big slide right next to the pie barn because we wanted to draw people up the hill to the pie barn to make sure people got up there.”
The Egg Scramble was invested in as a main attraction, after continuing going to trade shows like Tim Vala did and after going to one by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, they settled on the company Foam Factory.
“We want the whole family to be able to participate,” Fong said. “We thought it’d be a really cool opportunity to put something big in, and it’s an indoor attraction, which is a plus. If the farm gets muddy you can still come out to the egg scramble.”
Additionally within recent years, the presence of apples has grown around the farm.
“My dad used to go to Nebraska City when he was a little boy, and remembered picking apples with his parents,” Fong said. “I have pictures of myself as a one or two year old picking apples with my mom and dad, before they even had Vala’s.”
They always wanted to expand to apples and when an opportunity to hire someone with a vast knowledge of apples arose, they jumped on it, and then they had to wait three years for a usable apple crop. The youngest of the three sisters, Kelsey, came back in 2014 after going to culinary school and working in many bakeries and got The Pie Barn up and running. Eventually, she transitions to the cider operation.
“Kelsey and her husband David wanted to do hard cider,” Fong said. “We built the cider mill mostly intending to do sweet cider, but then we also did hard cider.”
This took a solid five years to get open as it was a huge, expensive project but it was well worth it to pay homage to the roots of Vala’s while also expanding it into newer territory. Another thing that many guests from over the years might recognize is the maps to the park, which change every year.
“The old ones were done by an in-house artist, Larry Peterson,” Fong said. “But as we got bigger and our map needed to be in scale so that people could actually find their way around.”
Another way that Tim Vala decided to make business successful was to invest in it kind of similar to the stock market.
“The overall philosophy of my parents was to reinvest into the business and grow little by little,” Fong said. “And by the 40th year you can see it’s really paid off.”
For the 40th anniversary of Vala’s they have introduced many new things, including new and revamped attractions as well as food options such as strawberry flavors going to the roots of when they were a strawberry farm. They have additionally invested into remodeling some of these areas as well for the 2024 year!
“We have a chocolate covered strawberry fudge,” Fong said. “Our fudge shop got remodeled, and we’re highlighting it this year too because we started making fudge in 1991 and it was one of the first foods we started doing on the farm.”
Along with the fudge, they have a strawberry rhubarb pie.
“I remember one of my childhood memories is when we had the strawberries, we also had a patch of rhubarb by the spook shed,” Fong said. “I remember picking it with my grandma and then we’d go make strawberry rhubarb pies. I was like ‘that’s the perfect 40th anniversary pie,’”
Additionally in the cider barn, they have added cinnamon bread, which is a shareable food that also happens to be an experience.
“It’s gooey and warm and you put your own frosting on,” Fong said. “It’s nice to share it with your family.”
Like last year, they have added a couple new rides in addition to the carousel and the pig scrambler ride. This year they went with a pig tilt-a-whirl ride and a kid friendly roller coaster, the first attraction named after Tim Vala.
“They’re both rides you can ride as a family,” Fong said. “That’s what we always look for, is something that you can ride with your kids and they’ve been very successful. I’m so happy when I go by and people are having fun.”
Like with the $40 food passport last year, for an extra $22.38, they offer an adventure ticket add-on, which comes with 10 shots at the apple blasters, 30 paintball shots, and a ½ peck bag for apple picking.
“I think you get a really great experience if you get the adventure ticket,” Fong said. “You get a little bit of a discount on the paid attractions, and we liked encouraging people to go out and pick apples in the apple orchard.”
While they have 40,000 apple trees growing 45 varieties of apples on 40 acres, they don’t let them go to waste.
“We use every single apple because we use them for cider,” Fong said.
Vala’s also have 45 acres of pumpkins on their property, which is what they are more so known for. Kyle Willis, the agriculture director for Vala’s changed things up with this year’s crop.
“He threw in a bunch of ornamental seeds with the orange seeds, so it’s much more obvious with the different choices that you get with all these different pumpkins out there,” Fong said.
They also all happen to be edible if you so chose to eat them. While some people may not like to eat a raw pumpkin, some people might also not like the new chaperone policy that has been introduced this year. This policy states that starting at 4pm each day, guests under the age of 14 must be supervised by an adult 21 or over. Along with that policy, they have also expanded their days of operation, having a season pass day on August 31st and being open the first three days of November, including the brand new pumpkin destruction days. They are also open for two days before Thanksgiving for their Thanksgiving market.
“We usually sell out of pies,” Fong said. “It’s such an honor to be part of peoples thanksgiving tradition. We’ve been doing Thanksgiving pies since we started the pie barn in 2014, but it’s expanded a lot.”
Making the thousand plus pies for this is very labor intensive, but also quite special for a family owned operation.
“We make it all by hand and kind of the old fashioned way,” Fong said. “We have not compromised on quality and it takes a lot of work to get the quality where it is.”
They are made from scratch though and while most businesses and other farms don’t do it, Vala’s carries on their family history with pie making.
“It’s almost not profitable because it takes so much time and effort and the ingredients are expensive,” Fong said. It’s a labor of love for us. We love pie. Our grandmothers made from scratch pies, and so as sisters Kyla, Kelsey and I love the pie barn and we’re going to keep being good pies to everyone. We love it.”
Another thing that makes Vala’s special is founder Tim Vala’s drive to buy old barns and restore them for years to come.
“My dad got known for rescuing barns,” Fong said. “Whenever someone nearby was selling their land they would call my dad and they’d be like ‘hey I have this barn, would you like it?,’ and he’d be like ‘yes i’ll take the barn,’ it then became a joke, we’re like ‘no more barns,’ but then another one comes up and we get it again.”
Another thing that makes Vala’s stand out is their animatronics and design as it is quite good, especially working on a farm budget. This year, the Storybook Barn and haunted house got some renovations and additions from Brad Doolittle, who is the Animatronics Engineer for Vala’s, and has been with them for 14 years, although he does lots of other creative design on the farm. He also has a degree in robotics and automation as well as marketing.
“Every year he comes up with an idea of something he wants to expand on or make,” Fong said. “He gets a lot of creative freedom, and sometimes we have suggestions, like this year we wanted the haunted house and the story book barn [renovated] because some of the feedback from guests was ‘let’s push this up please,’ because they’re nostalgic attractions. So that was Brad’s project and he was in the haunted house and the storybook barn all summer making scenes.”
Since there are certain things that the Vala family wants added he is their go to for all things animatronic and creative design.
“The haunted house is what they wanted me to do this year,” Doolittle said. “It was getting kind of run down. The guy that used to do all the maintenance retired so it kind of fell into my lap and it just needed to be upgraded so I started doing that in January. I came to the realization that I wouldn’t be able to do it by myself so we hired a couple of guys. We’re not done yet. I think we’re about 75-80% to where I’d like it to be.”
While he worked on that, he also added the Sword in the Gourd to the Storybook Barn.
“The Sword in the Gourd was my passion project for the year,” Doolittle said. “They had mentioned the Sword in the Stone and I thought about it and I wanted to take the bull by its horns on that one because I had the whole Sword in the Gourd idea that instantly hit me.”
He also added a fog area by the haunted house as well to up the vibe, but he also had to get rid of the squeezy way due to vandalism.
“Those pillows were constantly being cut and it’s a few thousand dollars every time they’re cut and it happens 5-6 times a season,” Doolittle said. “That left that whole room open to do something so I put in a swamp with fog. The hearse on the outside trail, I wanted to add fog behind that as well. We tied that into the light area that we tried last year.”
One thing that many people complain about with any tourist attraction when they change a classic or add something like the rides the last few years, is the price. With Vala’s always adding new attractions and fixing up others and expanding their farm, it is no surprise that they do have to raise their prices occasionally.
“We’re probably one of the more expensive pumpkin patches, maybe the most expensive pumpkin patch in our area,” Fong said. “But I think that we’re worth it.”
With barbecue being quite popular in Nebraska and Kansas, they have expanded their barbecue selection opening up Ethan’s Barbecue by the cider mill, which is named after Fong’s son. To help do this, they hired a full time chef, Jeff Meyers, as well as a diverse group of seasonal hires.
“To take our food up a level we hired a full time chef who works for us year round,” Fong said. “It’s really fun to have a chef and someone who can focus on food quality because we hired 1300 staff members just for the fall and the food team itself is around 900.”
They also have 40 year long employees with Fong, Meyers and Doolittle being a few of them. This is however a business in which you must plan around August through November being busy and so it is not for everyone.
“We couldn’t do it without them, that’s for sure,” Fong said. “It’s such a fun season business because most of the year it’s very relaxed and you don’t interact with that many people just your smaller group and you’re planning and thinking and then you hit the season where you hire all these seasonal employees”
Vala’s has remained a family owned and operated business for four decades, and Fong as well as her sisters and brother in laws who are involved in the business, much like her mother and father, are always looking to lead and continue to build the skills necessary to stay in business and be effective leaders.
“Lots of businesses stumble when they try to transition from one generation to the next, but I feel like we’re doing a really good job of getting going,” Fong said. “I’m really happy with where the business is right now and we’re even looking forward to the next generation. We’re trying to make plans for our children when they decide to come into the business. I’m really proud that we’re able to keep it going.”
“My dad always said his advice is to go at it 100% if you are passionate about something and you believe in it,” Fong said. “That’s what he did with Vala’s because he could have kept a part time job as well, but he focused all of his efforts on it and he did the best he could and it really worked out well for him. When people are wishy-washy about starting their own business or saying I’ll maybe do it part time, it’s common to be cautious, but his advice is usually to just go for it and follow your dream.”
