It’s Apple Time at Fieldstone Enterprises

By OWEN MORRIS

Ken Krause smiling as his wife Nancy helps customers in the background.

Thirty miles west of Lawrence, on the outskirts of a town called Overbrook (town motto: “Don’t overlook Overbrook!”), on a patch of orchard stretching nearly 200 acres, stand hundreds of apple trees with dozens of varieties of fresh apples ready for picking. As in, you pick them yourself.

As Ken Krause sees it, that’s not a catch but an opportunity. “We get children here who don’t know that apples come from trees. They think they come from the grocery store. We’re able to show them that look, this tree was once small, like you are, but it kept growing and it grew fruit and that you’re going to keep growing.”

Krause and his wife Nancy own the orchard, which they call Fieldstone Enterprises. Krause claims to have 40 varieties of apples and refers to them as his children. Right now, late summer turning into early fall, is the best time to pick them. “All the apples have their own time — Lodi in August, Arkansas Black in November — but after the first of September, that’s when they really start. Each week, there will be a new variety ripe.”

When I asked Krause which apple variety he recommends most, he chuckled a bit, “Now, that’s asking me to pick which one my children I love the most.”