By
Christine Morris
Assistant Editor
Farmers should make as
much as accountants. At least that’s the philosophy of one New
York farmer.
Dan Pawlowski, owner of the agritainment venture Pumpkinville in Great
Valley, N.Y., was an accountant in his first life. The job required
him to wear a suit and tie to work everyday, but he said he didn’t
mind because he was satisfied with the standard of living he and his
wife could maintain for his family. When Pawlowski left his job as
an accountant to focus strictly on his farm market, he wanted to keep
that standard of living.
“I shouldn’t have to give that up just because I’m
a farmer,” Pawlowski said. “I need to be paid fairly.”
He can control how much he makes to some extent by charging customers
for activities such as pony rides, hayrides and a corn maze. Pawlowski
also makes money at the farm’s restaurant, the Pumpkinville
Grill, the u-pick pumpkin patch and the apple barn.
When he sets prices for the farm’s activities, he said it’s
important to consider how much the customer is willing to pay, not
how much he would pay.
“You can’t say, ‘What would I pay for it,’”
Pawlowski said. “You have to ask what the value is to the typical
suburban family who drives an SUV and charge the appropriate amount.
Too many times people tend to under-price things.”
Right now Pawlowski doesn’t charge general admission to the
nearly 12,000 people who might come to his farm market on a single
day, but it’s something he’s been thinking about.
“I’d love to charge admission, but I’m scared to
death to do it,” Pawlowski said. “Maybe you have a family
who can afford a hayride at $3 a piece but not $7 to get in. And then
I’d have to figure out how to deal with the people who come
back several times a season.”
And those customers come from as far as three hours away, many from
the north Pennsylvania area.
People like to come out to escape their busy lives and spend a day
in the country amongst the colorful rolling hills, Pawlowski said.
You can’t get more country than this, he said, “our zip
code it E-I-E-I-O.”
Pumpkinville has 200 acres of land, with 30 of it devoted to pumpkins.
Ten of those acres are designated for u-pick, which is a big draw.
If it’s a nice day, Pawlowski said customers will spend forever
at Pumpkinville, eating, picking pumpkins and enjoying the activities.
But the customers need to be entertained.
But Pawlowski drew a fine line in the entertainment sector that he
will not cross because he doesn’t want to lose the emphasis
on farming. He said a place near Buffalo is more of an amusement park
with pumpkins.
“If you see a Ferris wheel on this farm, look for my gravestone,”
he said. “We are farmers at heart, and we understand we need
to make money through entertainment, but not an amusement park.”
One of the ways Pawlowski’s added entertainment is with a goat
walk, which is basically a jungle gym for goats. People of all ages
enjoy watching the goats run across the elevated series of ramps to
get their food and people of all ages seem to enjoy it, he said.
When customers come to Pumpkinville in the fall, they tend to stay
for three or four hours, so there’s always a large crowd. Since
the Pawlowski’s took over the operation in 1996, they have learned
a few tricks about handling big crowds from attending state and national
conferences as well as checking out how the big guys like Six Flags
amusement park.
“There are times we throw up a white flag and run home,”
he said. “But then we realize we are home so we can’t
run very far.”
The best way to handle so many people is to just deal with each matter
as it comes up, Pawlowski said.
“Every once in a while you get somebody whose only mission,
it seems like, is to make your day miserable,” he said. “But
you have to remember that there are 200 really nice ones for that
one bad one.”
A strategy Pawlowski uses to control the large crowds is using roped-off
lines for the activities and the registers. Without lines some customers
got confused or would miss out on an activity because they weren’t
paying attention, he said. Now customers have to stand in line, and
it’s clear whose turn is next.
On busy days, Pawlowski sets up additional stands to take the heat
off other areas in the market. Sometimes he sells hot dogs, chips
and soda at a stand to help reduce the line at the Pumpkinville Grill.
That way he can serve his customers faster, which makes them happy.
And happy customers return.
Pawlowski can’t satisfy all his customers alone; his family
plays a big role.
“The roles just evolved with our strengths,” he said.
“My wife does the ordering, deals with insurance and coordinates
the schedule.”
They hope to make enough money so his wife can retire within five
years from her outside job as a safety specialist at a nuclear facility.
Dan considers himself the farmer and general manager.
“I don’t understand how someone could do it without a
balance of two people,” he said. His daughter Lisa, who just
graduated from college, and his son Jim, who is still in college,
come home every weekend to help out.
The family also has 70 employees helping to make the customers’
experience as smooth as possible.
“We’ve been blessed with some great people working here,”
he said.
Pawlowski said he considers his senior citizen employees his base.
Then he hires teenagers, many of whom have been involved in the 4-H
Club. The friends of those teenagers also get involved.
However, managing 70 employees is most difficult when there’s
a rush of customers. Sometimes the workers get a little overwhelmed,
but Pawlowski reminds them that the rush only lasts four or five hours.
Another problem he has is a lack of experienced pickers. He’s
not able to recruit many experienced pickers because the migrant population
is low in that area.
Pawlowski said he didn’t have all the responsibilities as a
general manager when he was an accountant, and he doesn’t make
as much money as when both he and his wife had outside jobs. But he
said it’s OK because he’s living a higher quality life.
