A local pumpkin farmer is carving out a niche for himself with a series of self-serve roadside stands.
Joel Konrad, 22, lives in Thornton, but he has eight stands, including two in Bradford West Gwillimbury, where people can grab pumpkins, gourds, sweet corn, hay bales, and butternut squash, and leave their payments in a secure metal box.
Each stand has a large, hand-painted sign in the shape of a pumpkin that reads, “Self Serve.”
While Konrad, a business management student at Georgian College in Barrie, grows and sells most of the vegetables himself out of a love for farming, he wants to eventually expand the stands into a full-time career after graduating next fall.
“I love doing anything on the farm,” he said. “An avenue into the farming world is pumpkins. Pumpkins has been a good crop to get my foot in the door.”
Konrad said he grows all the vegetables — except sweet corn, which he buys from his neighbours, who grow it — on his family’s 41-hectare property, but his parents are not farmers. They are a teacher and construction worker, respectively, who rent out the property for other farmers to grow cash crops.
Konrad, however, has slowly been expanding his pumpkin business over the last four years.
He starts planting his crops in May, while attending full-time classes.
After Labour Day in September, he starts picking his crops and selling them by Sept. 10, while moving his course load to part time to be able to juggle both responsibilities. He also bales all the hay himself that he sells.
All his products range in price from $3 to $10, based on size.
Konrad said the self-serve model is his way of trusting people and putting something positive into the world.
“The hardest thing about selling pumpkins is knowing some people are stealing the pumpkins. That’s frustrating,” he said, but “having a self-serve stand gives people an opportunity to be honest. There’s a lot of them that don’t steal.”
Konrad said he hopes people will use the self-serve stands as a teachable lesson for their kids on being honest and respectful of farmers.
While he said he figures pumpkins are stolen every day, the cash boxes are never taken.
Konrad had special boxes made by a friend who is a metal worker, and every year they add more security to them.
He said he also checks them every day — sometimes finding grinder or drill marks on them from people trying to break in — and empties them every evening.
“What I wish they would think of is I wouldn’t steal from (them) at their workplace. Why would you steal from me?”
But for the few incidents of theft, Konrad said many local people have shown him support on Facebook and with notes of thanks left in the cash boxes.
Although this business is relatively new, Konrad has been growing and selling pumpkins since he was a kid.
“You just couldn’t have a good summer job living in the country, so I just made my own job selling pumpkins,” he said.
Twelve years ago, in order to help raise $2,000 for his sister’s mission trip, he said his family sold pumpkins for the first time and easily met their goal. They kept selling pumpkins at a few local stands each year until Konrad upped his efforts in the last several years.
He hopes to expand his business to sell asparagus in May and June, corn in July and August, and pumpkins in September and October.
“I love farming,” he said.
The pumpkin stands will be operating until right after Halloween.
Self-serve pumpkin stand locations:
- Husky gas station, Bradford West Gwillimbury
- County Road 27 at 8th Line, near Bond Head
- Highway 89 near Tanger Outlets mall, Innisfil
- Essa Road, just west of Veteran’s Drive, Barrie
- Yonge Street, north of Big Bay Point Road, Barrie
- Highway 90 near George Johnston Road, Springwater Township
- County Road 10 between Baxter and Alliston
- County Road 21, halfway between Baxter and Thornton
For more information, visit the Konrad Farm Markets Facebook page.
