A bead of sweat rolls down the temple of Rachel Lewis, one of Libby’s Pumpkin Patch co-owners, before dropping to the floor. It’s an unusually humid evening for late September in Albany, but Lewis welcomes the much-needed rain absent this time last year.
In the distance, Rachel’s husband, Kevin Lewis, and daughter, namesake Libby Lewis, uproot pumpkins from the dense, wet dirt and transfer them into large bins. The pumpkins are plump, plentiful, and glow bright orange.
The Lewis family is hard at work; this fall is particularly special due to their closure in 2024.
“Last year we had nothing to sell,” Kevin Lewis says. “All this land looked like the surface of the moon. You see all this green grass? Last year, it was brown, crusty and a fire hazard. One stray cigarette would’ve sent us up in flames.”
Fall 2024 marked a D4 or “exceptional” drought in Athens County, which left Libby’s Pumpkin Patch deserted and its crops unharvested. In business since 2011, last fall was the first year since opening that Libby’s was forced to close its doors to the public.
Thankfully, this year has been a tremendous turnaround for the patch.
The Lewis family started by just selling pumpkins off their porch and never expected their small business to take off so strongly.
“We went into everything sideways, not having a clue what we were doing,” Rachel Lewis says. “Then, people would start driving in and asking, ‘Hey, can we go get the pumpkins right off the patch?’”
“Since then, year to year, it’s just been growing.”
Libby’s Pumpkin Patch has expanded to include pumpkin picking, a flower field, a corn maze, tractor hayrides, giant slides, and hay bale creations of various animals and children’s characters. The patch also includes venue space that the family built themselves, which is used to host weddings, parties and various receptions.
Also featured on the patch, the Lewis family’s signature homemade pumpkin ice cream, which they claim relies more on a feeling than a recipe.
“That’s a funny one; there is no recipe. It changes every week! Rachel won’t write it down,” Kevin says.
It is best to visit Libby’s on an empty stomach; the patch features several local vendors selling a variety of meats, baked goods and fall beverages. There are also food trucks on select weekends that provide outdoor seating to enjoy meals.
Despite last year’s drought, the family has persevered in this growing season with a successful fall 2025 reopening. The patch operates on Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. during October.
A typical day on Libby’s Pumpkin Patch consists of long tractor hayride lines; children running around the patch, and couples gathering by various attractions to take pictures.
“It was nice to see smiling faces and the kids that we’ve seen since they were very young. We definitely missed that,” Rachel Lewis says. “It was nice to hear that people missed us, too, and are glad we are back.”
A popular attraction with the kids is the backwoods hiking trail, a half-mile trek adorned with spooky sights like Bigfoot silhouettes, a crashed UFO, and witches on brooms flying around the trees. Another favorite part of the patch is the challenging, yet manageable, corn maze made from crops that the Lewis family harvests themselves.
For those who are fans of the Flower Cart that operates on West Union Street, adjacent to Ohio University’s College Green, the Lewis family transports the cart to the patch for all to enjoy. The Flower Cart is a personal project of Libby’s, which has an assortment of single-stemmed plants that customers can arrange into a custom bouquet for $1 a stem.
“When we couldn’t open last year, the only thing that grew was the flowers she had in the high tunnel,” Rachel Lewis says. “So, we had flowers and we took them uptown to sell them, that’s how the Flower Cart came about, because everything else was sort of failing.”
Cover crops are used on the farm to promote plant health and soil quality, ensuring that the family’s business will remain in operation for years to come. The Lewis family has occupied the land the patch rests on for six generations, with Libby marking the seventh and far from the last.
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