What is now Prairie Sky Orchard was built from the ground up in the early 1990s from an empty 5-acre lot in Union, IL, located 50 miles northwest of Chicago. After we moved into our newly built home, we had a desire to use the land. Our three children pulled their money together and decided to buy pumpkin seeds.

Those seeds grew into a harvest of several hundred pumpkins, which all sold on our first weekend. We realized we had a great location and might be onto something.

The following year we got a little more adventurous, so we planted even more pumpkins. Signs were created and placed along the road to provide greater visibility and direction to our new venture. As people discovered us, many also asked where the apples were. We found out that the shape and color of our signs looked more like apples than pumpkins.

Prompted by this unintentional interest in apples, we learned what we could about growing apple trees. In 1996 we planted our first 100 dwarf apple trees and have since added 900 more trees. We are now in the process of taking out the older trees and replacing them with a new trellis system to allow us to put in 1600 total trees to offer a greater selection of apples.

A few years later, we added a pole barn to the property. We started selling Amish jams and jellies out of the barn, and people liked our products. Since then we have expanded our selection to now include a variety of gourmet foods.

In 2002, we expanded our product selection even further by adding raspberry plants to provide additional pick-your-own opportunities.

Today, we continue what those original pumpkins seeds created. We are thankful for those who continue to make Prairie Sky Orchard a part of their family fall events.