For the past 20 years, Brittany Jones’ family has grown pumpkins amid the gentle hills of western Iowa.

It started as an effort just for fun. They’d plant a patch behind their home in Smithland and invite friends and family to come pick them in the fall. The patch steadily grew bigger and bigger, and soon, more people knew about the family’s pumpkin patch.

“My mother (Traci Castle) and I started daydreaming about what it would be like to start a real pumpkin business about 10 years ago, but after her battle with breast cancer in 2020–2021, we decided to stop waiting and give it a shot,” says Jones, a Woodbury County Farm Bureau member.

That leap of faith turned into Hillside Harvest, established in...