James Maxey, now 19, started growing pumpkins as a hobby when he was 13 years old.
Six years down the line, the pumpkin farm he helped start (and which owned by parents Keith and Katherine) has become the largest in the UK.
Maxey’s Farm has 35 employees and is open from 9 to 5, seven days a week in the weeks before Halloween.
Watch the video to find out more of this boy’s story below.
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Video credit: Rumble
Customers can choose as many pumpkins as they want and pay according to the size of the fruit. The smaller ones go from £2($2.70) while the largest is pegged at £10($13).
If you thought it was strange for a 13-year-old to ditch Nintendos to start growing pumpkins, it actually gets stranger still: the teen doesn’t even like pumpkins.
He said: “I roasted one last year because I thought I should at least try eating one but I wasn’t keen.”
Still, they have a successful business and the demand has driven them to grow more and more pumpkins each year. In previous years, demand was so big that they ran out of pumpkins before Halloween.
In the beginning, James only grew enough pumpkins to sell to friends so he could earn some extra pocket money. Nowadays, each autumn sees him harvesting up to 25,000 pumpkins. To make sure that everyone can get enough for their jack o’ lanterns, they’ve grown a huge stash this year.
A supplier in Lincolnshire serves as James’ source of pumpkin seeds which he buys during spring. He then uses a converted planter attached to a tractor to plant the seeds. The teen even had to leave school at 16 in order to manage the successful venture.
“I started when I was 13 next to the farm shop with a little half-an-acre field with about 200 pumpkins in it which I sold to my school friends,” says James. “Every year I planted more and more and now I’ve about five or six acres.
“Any pumpkins which are leftover get chopped up and plowed back into the soil so nothing is wasted. The soil around this area has quite a lot of clay in it which I think helps our pumpkins maintain their deep dark orange color.
“In supermarkets, pumpkins tend to be quite light and almost yellow but ours have a nice dark color to them which people like. I have always wanted to be out and could never sit in a classroom or anything. I have always got to be out doing something.”
Replaced!