Meet Mark Stadler.  He is from Wichita and in the summer of 2014, on summer break from Benedictine College, Mark came to the farm to work alongside our usual group of high school and college kids. In August, Mark asked if he could work fall harvest instead of going back to school. Always a busy time, he was a welcome addition.  He worked fall harvest of 2014, went home that winter, came back in the spring of 2015, and has been here ever since.  In 2016, Mark and Emilee Strecker, also from Wichita, were married.  Over time, Mark has assumed more and more responsibility, our farm operation has grown prodigiously, and we are in the process of gradually transitioning the farm to Mark and Emilee.

In 2018 Mark visited an orchard in eastern Kansas that stirred the love of apple growing in his heart. Since this all started with an apple orchard, it didn’t take much to convince Dan to plant another one.  He told Mark, “You’re not the first 20 something guy in Republic County to want to plant an orchard.”  In 2019 we planted our first trees in a high-density system, very different from the trees Dan planted in the 80’s. The high-density system uses a trellis to support full dwarfing trees planted 3’ apart in rows 12’ apart. The trees produce much earlier, are easier to maintain, and have fantastic yields. Last year, 2021, we had our first crop. It was a great joy for us to see families once again picking apples in our orchard.