Rising up out of the flat Mississippi Delta and transformed from a field of soybeans and corn 11 months of the year a fall playland for children emerges for 31 glorious days.
Situated alongside a flat stretch of rural Mississippi 16 in Rolling Fork, Farmer Jim’s Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze pops up like an autumn oasis. On an unseasonably warm Wednesday morning in October, a group of children from Yazoo City’s Manchester Academy raucously raced up and down paths through the maze of maize and carefully inspect pumpkins for selection while “Farmer” Jim Newman, dressed in his signature overalls, and his wife Lynn kept a watchful eye over them.
Both Jim and Lynn grew up in Sharkey and Issaquena counties and have been farming for years. When they were approached by friend and Union County extension agent Stanley Wise to start a pumpkin patch, the couple was not very receptive at first, but after three or four years of persistence they finally gave in. They started the pumpkin patch and corn maze in 2006 and their business has grown ever since.

“I planted three acres of pumpkins down there and I guess it was beginner’s luck, because I probably made 4,000 pumpkins to the acre and I didn’t fertilize, spray for insects, nothing,” Jim said.
As the years have passed, Jim’s techniques have gotten more sophisticated and his operation has grown, now taking up almost 15 acres of his 1,400-acre working farm. He and Lynn grow everything from regular orange pumpkins of various shapes and sizes to decorative pumpkins to white, blue or pink pumpkins.
During weekdays the pumpkin patch and maze are open by reservation only, but on the weekend it is open to the public. For $5 a visitor can walk away with a pumpkin right out of the patch regardless of size or shape – if you can carry it.
“You’ll have a little 35- or 40-pound boy trying to pick up a 50-pound pumpkin,” Jim said. “Some of them do it, and how they do it I don’t know.
“We tell them they can have anything they want,” Lynn added. “The rule is they have to be able to carry it at least to the road.”
Once the perfect pumpkin is picked, guests can make their way over to the corn maze, which is shaped like a bear this year in honor of the Great Delta Bear Affair happening in Rolling Fork Oct. 25. That night the maze will be open from 9 p.m. to midnight for the by-reservation-only haunted maze, which always has a good turnout, especially from Vicksburg, Jim said.
“The people of Vicksburg that come to the haunted maze are always good to us,” Jim said.
Although the haunted maze is fun, Jim and Lynn’s favorite part is seeing the kids enjoying their time on the farm, they said.
“They get out there and have the best time,” Lynn said.
A young girl once approached Jim while on a tour of the farm with tears in her eyes to tell him she had made a mistake, and didn’t like the pumpkin she had chosen. “I said ‘Well let’s go put it back and go get the one you want,’” Jim said. “I looked at the dad and said ‘Kids rule here.’”
Kids are king at Farmer Jim’s, and the couple even does an educational talk for schools that come to visit.

“We teach them about what corn is and how the pumpkin grows,” Lynn said. “It’s just enough that it covers their educational requirements so that the schools are happy and we’re happy too because they’re here.
The Manchester Academy students studied the life cycle of pumpkins before coming to the farm, teacher Laura King said.
“This gives them an opportunity to see it first hand, and they have a great time,” King said. “I would tell anybody to come here and we’re definitely coming back next year.”
As the children, teachers, and parents collected their lunchboxes and newly picked pumpkins to load the bus and head back to Yazoo City, they gathered and yelled an unorganized “thank you” to the Newmans before departing.
Almost to himself, Jim muttered “That’s the why, that’s the reason right there.”