OLATHE, Kan. — A local favorite has now become an expert at making fall magical for kids and grownups both.

“Everybody loves the fall. The temperature’s just right, lots of family activities to do, get together, pick out a pumpkin and also just enjoy the outdoors,” Kirk Berggren said.

He and his family own KC Pumpkin Patch and KC Wine Co. in Olathe. For them, it’s a labor of love.

“We’re both farm kids, my wife and I,” he said. “She’s an Iowa girl. I’m a Nebraska farm boy.”

They started their pumpkin patch years ago in Gardner. They moved to Olathe when the Intermodal Exchange was built.

“Since then my wife and my daughter bought this land, and it had grapes on it,” Berggren said. “So we have have both the pumpkin patch and the winery here.”

The winery and event space stay busy year-round, but fall is when the pumpkin patch becomes the star.

“We call this Oktoberfest, so it’s our weekend of basically all our activities are open, the gourd gun, the trains, the slides, everything — as well as having both children and adult beverages here,” Berggren said.

And it’s not their first pumpkin rodeo.

“We’ve had people that have been coming here for years who followed us from the old place to the new place for about 14-15 years now,” he said.

He said all children love it, but especially the city kids.

“Sometimes they’ll get on the one thing — whether that’s tricycles, the duck races, pumping a pump — and they’ll stay there for an hour and a half,” Berggren said. “The parents are like, ‘I paid money to get in here, and we’ve stayed in here the whole time.'”

And even the grownups who are kids at heart find joy at the KC Pumpkin Patch.

“Playing on hay, sliding around, playing in the sand, all those things you liked to do as a kid, now you can come back out here and do again,” he said.

KC Pumpkin Patch is open Thursday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is $15 per person. You can buy tickets online here.