Celebrity mazes are just one of the ideas the Schnepfs have come up
with to entice visitors to their 250-acre farm in Queen Creek,
Arizona.
Mark's grandparents purchased the farm in 1941 and sent his
parents,
Ray and Thora, to get it going. The couple spent their
honeymoon night sharing a shack with a farmhand. The Schnepfs grew
cotton and potatoes, and, through the 1960s, Ray was called the
Potato King of
Arizona. Over the years they added other crops, and
a majority went to
New York by rail. "There was a rail spur right
on the farm," says Mark.
But that business dwindled over time, and "in the early 1990s we
knew we had to do something completely different or sell it for
development [like all the neighboring farms]," he says.
Carrie, the former city girl who had married
Mark in 1991, led the
way. She kicked off the farm's first peach festival in 1992. "I had
my mother out there with a little stand, and 6,000 people showed
up," says Carrie. "Our orchards were picked clean in 30 minutes."
Now the peach festival - held each May - attracts 25,000 people
over three days. And the October pumpkin festival pulls in a bumper
crop of 150,000 visitors. Other Schnepf Farms fun includes a bakery
and a "Lease a Peach Tree" program that allows people to pick their
own - some trees serve up to 150 pounds of peaches each - without
battling crowds. And if the weather doesn't play fair? "They get to
enjoy what farmers enjoy: weather-related risk," says Carrie.
Contact (480) 987-3100 or schfarm@earthlink.net;
www.schnepffarms.com
Or Consider Masker Orchards in
Warwick, New York: (845) 986-1058;
www.maskers.com
No Dude Here