Key Takeaways

Kelly Schultz, an antique seller by profession, operates The Great Pumpkin Farm for about seven weeks a year.

Schultz had no farming experience when he bought the 85-acre property for about $650,000 in 1993.

Today, the farm draws more than 100,000 visitors each fall with pumpkins, hayrides, live entertainment and other attractions.

About 33 years ago, Kelly Schultz told his friends and family that he was going to open a pumpkin farm .

“Everybody laughed at me,” he said in a new interview with CNBC Make It.

The endeavor was outside Schultz’s area of expertise. He was a second-generation antiques seller and didn’t know anything about farming. He bought the small farm in Clarence, New York, anyway.

No one’s laughing at him now.

Schultz, 74, now runs The Great Pumpkin Farm , located about 15 miles northeast of Buffalo.…