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Raleigh’s Pumpkin Patch

By Denise Fisher

Married for over 60 years, with six children, and 40 years of harvesting crops, Raleigh and Edith Brooks know a lot about raising things.  In the early 1960s, Raleigh had acquired a position at Colorado State University as the Assistant State 4-H Leader, and the Brooks, looking for a rural setting in which to raise their growing family, bought an acreage in Timnath and built a new house. As a 4-H project, the Brooks oldest son, Ken, drew up a floor plan for the house that they would build. With six kids, it was a priority that each child had a room of their own. “With so many people in the house, everyone needs a place to get away,” Edith said.

Since then, the Brooks family has lived, and planted and harvested crops on this four acre lot across from the Timnath Elementary School. Even that first year, before the house was completed, the Brooks kids planted a garden on their new acreage as a 4-H project. Edith recalls bumper crops of green beans before she had running water in the kitchen and only sheets hanging from safety pins as cupboard doors. But, she notes, they did have water in the bathroom.

From then on, the Brooks always had a crop of something planted in the field. The kids entered produce at the fair. They would figure out what to grow from the premium book, and usually planted a little of everything.

Aside from the 4-H garden, Raleigh grew an acre of cucumbers for Dreher. Cucumbers need to be harvested at a particular size to get a premium price, which meant they needed to be picked every other day. The Brooks kids were involved in this project picking one half of the field one day, then the other half the next, then the first half the next, then the other half, then the first half…and on and on and on, all summer. Raleigh would weigh the cucumbers on the scale at the grain elevator in Timnath, and then Ken, who had his driver’s license by then, would drive the load of pickles to Windsor where the Dreher pickling plant was. They had to have them there by 4:00, but if they dropped them off by 2:00, the other kids would ride along and go swimming in Windsor as a reward. But, even with this reward, it wasn’t long before the kids rebelled against cucumbers. No more!

So Raleigh started planting sweet corn instead. They planted three or four varieties, some early maturing, some late, and would sell it at the Farmers Market, or take orders from folks who really wanted to get it fresh. The Brooks became known for their premium quality corn. Some customers would drive all the way down from Cheyenne to get their sweet corn. The ears were nice and big, but were sweet and tender. A guy came by one day and said “that’s not sweet corn.” He thought it was field corn because it was too tall and the ears were too big. The youngest Brooks, Eddie, handed him an ear and said, “Yes it is.”

Then one day, one of their neighbors who was a pumpkin grower came by to “borrow a kid” to sit on the planter to help him plant his pumpkins. He commented in passing to Raleigh, “You ought to think about growing pumpkins.”

And so Raleigh started growing pumpkins. For years thereafter, the field became known locally as Raleigh’s Pumpkin Patch. He retrofit funnels made out of plastic bottles onto his planter and the kids or Edith would sit on the back of the planter and drop seeds in the funnels every three feet. They sold pumpkins to Steele’s Market and Beavers.

By this time Edith, who has always been an educator at heart, had her own preschool. Each October before Halloween, the Brooks would invite preschools and kindergarten classes from the surrounding area to pick pumpkins. School bus after school bus would pull into the Brooks’ driveway and kids would tumble out of the busses and across the field. Each child got to pick one pumpkin, and they could only take what they could carry. Often Edith saw a child pick up first one pumpkin, then put it down to pick a better pumpkin, and, after crossing the field picking up and putting down one pumpkin after another, the child would come back and take home the original pumpkin.

In 2002 Raleigh stopped growing pumpkins after he had a stroke. “It was really hard for Raleigh to give it up,” Edith said. Although the stroke was mild, it required that Raleigh slow down a bit. They sold their equipment – the tractor, the planter, and disc. The field lay fallow for the first time in years.

It was hard for those of us who lived in the community to see the field empty of pumpkins and only growing weeds. My neighbor and I started having discussions of what one might do with such an empty, weedy field. A botanical garden? Too costly. How about a community garden? This idea made more sense, but we knew it was impossible if the Brooks weren’t willing to allow such a use. All we could do was ask.

When I called Edith, she said she and Raleigh were just leaving on a trip. She thought they would be open to the idea of a community garden, but would need time to think it over. “I’ll give you a call after we get back next week,” she said. We hung up.

Five minutes later my phone rang. It was Edith.  She simply said, "Yes!" and the Timnath Community Garden was born.

The Timnath Community Garden is now entering its seventh year with more than forty plots and as many gardeners growing food for their families, for the Food Bank of Larimer County, and learning the best organic gardening techniques. They are growing everything, from the beans, cucumbers and pumpkins that the Brooks once grew, to tomatillos, artichokes, and pollinator flower gardens. That “Yes!” from the Brooks reflects their vision and their desire to continue on what they started – to provide a way to connect to rural roots, to educate, to join together in community, to give back to community, and to just dig in the dirt.

Raleigh was recently inducted into the National 4-H Hall of Fame for his life-time achievements and contributions to 4-H.