EAST DUBUQUE, IL – Frank Fincel V isn’t much of a talker. Unless, of course, he’s talking about his crops.

He advises, “you always got to rotate your crops,” among other bits of knowledge as he gives a guided tour of his family’s farm.

Meanwhile, his father, Frank Fincel IV, is busy getting a portion of their fields ready for pumpkins.

“Right now my dad’s putting in the furrows for the pumpkin field. This is all going to be pumpkins.”

Although the pumpkins won’t be ready until Fall, there’s still plenty of produce that’s ready at the Fincel farm right now.

Sarah Fincel says, “we’re planting a lot of broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, beets, all of those are done by hand or transplanted into the ground by hand. And as you can see we’ve got greenhouses full of flowers that we’re trying to sell.”

While the Fincels plant plenty of fruits and vegetables, their staple is sweet corn, and they’re going to plant 70 acres of it by mid-July.

“Well, it’s just a couple inches high right now but everything is about a week ahead of where it was in previous years just because we’ve had a really nice spring,” she explains.

The corn is a week ahead of schedule thanks to perfect spring weather.

Frank Fincel V says these favorable weather conditions includes, “52 degrees ground temperature, warm nights is when it really grows.”

And he adds that it takes the whole family to get the crops ready for sale.

“It takes everyone, it’s a family thing and I mean if one person isn’t here then we start to get behind,” he said.

In the end, all of the hard work is well worth it for Sarah Fincel and her family.

She said, “the customer is really happy and then they come back and they tell their friends, I mean that feels really good.”