JANSEN - About four miles from the town of Jansen sits Jurgens Pumpkin Patch. Nick Jurgens and his sister Tabetha had always had a dream of opening a pumpkin patch of their own, and last year they made it happen.

“We have grown and sold pumpkins for 10 or 15 years,” Jurgens said. “It’s always been a passion of ours and we’ve wanted to open this to the public for 10 or 15 years."

Pumpkin patches are one of the most popular things about fall in Nebraska. While major pumpkin patches such as Roca Berry Farm in Roca and Vala’s in Gretna may be the most popular, Jurgens has one element that stands out from the rest.

“The great thing about here, we’re trying to keep admission free,” Jurgens said. “That way, everybody can come and we have people who come every day.”

Jurgens Pumpkin Patch is only open from 11-7 on Saturday and 11-6 on Sundays. Therefore, free admission can make things difficult. However, for the Jurgens, there’s more to owning a pumpkin patch than making money.

“When you do free admission, people can do the fun stuff,” Jurgens said. “Some of these pumpkin patches, it costs $30 a person. We would rather see someone have a waffle cone and enjoy the time with family.”

The patch has some new additions for year two such as a corn maze and new additions to one of the patches most popular attractions. But, nothing too scary for the little ones.

“The skeleton trail has a ton of new scenes, a ton of new audio, we have 10-foot skeletons, 10-foot T-Rex skeletons,” Jurgens said. “Some of it is a little scarier, but we haven’t had any issues with any young kids being too scared.”

Jansen has a population of just over 100. However, on weekends in the fall, Jurgens Pumpkin Patch triples that number.

“We are in shock, for the place we’re located, the amount of people that show up,” Jurgens said. “There are times we have over 300 cars in the parking lot, and it makes us smile. I don’t think we’ve seen anyone who isn’t happy out here, so that makes us smile,” Jurgens said.