Drive down Ziegler Drive on the first Saturday of October and you'll hit a wall of parked cars a quarter mile before you reach Mark Tubbs Memorial Park. Three years ago, you wouldn't have. The Lima Pumpkin Festival & AG Day didn't exist until 2023, and it drew about 2,000 people that first year. By its second year in 2024, attendance had nearly doubled to more than 3,800, and roughly four in ten of those visitors drove in from outside Livingston County altogether.
That's not the kind of growth a town plans for in a budget meeting. It's the kind that happens when one person with a specific reason to care builds something small and honest, and the town lets it grow on its own terms. The person in this case is Steve Werner, who grew up on a vegetable farm in the Mendon and Rush area and wanted his neighbors in Lima to understand what farming actually asks of the people who do it. His own words on the idea are simple: he wanted people to know what it takes to grow something. Three years later, that idea is the single biggest day on Lima's calendar, and it's still free.
The Math Behind a Festival That Keeps Growing
A lot of small-town festivals hit a ceiling fast. They draw the same few hundred locals every year, cost money to keep running, and eventually get folded into something bigger or quietly retired. Lima's Pumpkin Festival is doing the opposite, and the reason matters more than the raw attendance number.
Going from 2,000 to 3,800-plus in a single year isn't just growth, it's growth without dilution. Werner and his team have kept the event free and explicitly family-friendly even as it scaled past what a town of Lima's size would normally expect to draw on its own. The fact that 40 percent of that 2024 crowd came from beyond county lines tells you the festival has become a genuine regional pull, not just a bigger version of a local church picnic. And it's doing that while still running its budget through a giant-pumpkin weigh-in and a corn-eating contest rather than a ticketed gate or corporate sponsor package.
The festival funds itself in a way that fits its scale. Last year's event added a live auction of a 1950 John Deere Model B tractor, a piece of equipment with only two owners in its 76-year history, to raise money for Mark Tubbs Memorial Park, the same park that hosts the festival every year. That's a fundraising model built entirely from local agricultural history, not an imported gimmick. It's the kind of detail that only makes sense once you understand who's running the show and why.
What Actually Fills the Day
This year's festival lands on Saturday, October 3, 2026, running 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Mark Tubbs Memorial Park, 7384 Ziegler Drive. The format has stayed consistent since 2023, which is part of why it works:
- Giant pumpkin and sunflower weigh-ins, with the 2024 winning pumpkin topping 1,300 pounds, more than double the 2023 winner
- A corn-eating contest and a pumpkin dessert bake-off open to any home baker
- Chainsaw carving demonstrations, a fixture that's featured artists like Fritz and Mary Loomis in recent editions
- Draft-horse wagon rides and a 4-H and antique tractor showcase
- The 2 Barn Farm petting zoo and pony rides for kids
- Food vendors including a chicken barbecue, plus local produce, meat, and craft vendors
None of this requires a ticket. None of it depends on a headline act flown in from somewhere else. The festival's draw is the thing itself, agriculture presented plainly, and that's exactly the pitch Werner set out to make when he founded it.
The Bar Down the Road Runs on the Same Logic
Lima's other standing institution sits about three miles east on West Main Street, and it was built the same way: one person, one specific reason, no committee. Fanatics Pub opened when owner Jim Shelly, who'd run a pizza business in town for years, took over the building at what locals call the crossroads of Lima and turned it into a full-service restaurant and blues venue. More than a decade later, Fanatics is booking upwards of 100 shows a year, and touring acts that include Grammy and Blues Music Award winners now route through a 100-seat room in a town of a few thousand people because Shelly built a reputation for treating musicians and neighbors the same way. His own description of the place sums up the whole approach: there are no strangers here, just friends you have yet to meet.
That reputation has started to spread past Lima's borders too. Shelly now books acts at the Riveria in nearby Geneseo as well, which means the same person responsible for Lima's live music calendar is quietly shaping Geneseo's. It's a small, specific example of how one town's homegrown institution ends up exporting its character to the next one over.
Fall is peak season at Fanatics. Recent bookings have run nearly every week, mixing blues, rock, and acoustic acts, and the venue's fall fest tradition brings several local performers onto one bill for an evening built around exactly the kind of low-key, high-quality entertainment Shelly set out to create when he first took over the building.
Where the Morning Starts
If you're making a day of it, the town's other fixture is the Lima Diner on East Main Street, open for breakfast and lunch most days of the week, known locally for its fish fry and a straightforward diner menu that hasn't changed much over the years. It's closed Mondays and Tuesdays, so plan a festival-day breakfast for Wednesday through Sunday, when the doors open at 8 a.m.
What This Actually Tells You About Lima
None of these three things, the festival, the pub, the diner, were built by an economic development office or a chamber of commerce campaign. They were built by people who lived here and had a personal reason to make something specific: a farmer who wanted his neighbors to understand agriculture, a restaurant owner who wanted a room for blues music, a diner that just kept doing what it does well. That's a different growth story than the one most small towns tell about themselves, where a festival gets bigger because a town council decided it should draw more tourism dollars.
Lima's version scaled because the thing itself was worth driving for, and that's a harder thing to manufacture than most towns realize. It's also the reason the festival could add 1,800 more attendees in a single year without losing the feel of a hometown event where you still run into people you know from the school pickup line.
If you already live here, October 3 is worth clearing your calendar for, and Fanatics is worth checking most Fridays through the fall. If you're the kind of person who pays attention to what makes a town actually work, not just what a listing photo shows, that's the kind of detail worth knowing before you ever need it.
For questions about the Lima market, or if you're curious what your own property here is worth in the current landscape of buyer interest this town's reputation keeps generating, reach out to Aimee Campbell Real Estate for a neighbor's read on the numbers, not just a portal estimate.
