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This website has been developed specifically for Kansas farmers and ranchers involved in AgriTourism, rural properties where the traveler has an opportunity to experience farm and country life far from the hustle of the city.
The site is a project of the Kansas Agritourism Advisory Council, working in cooperation with:
the Kansas Agriculture Marketing Division and the Travel and Tourism Division of the Department of Commerce
and with financial assistance from Frontier Farm Credit.
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If you have any questions, please contact the Department of Commerce, Travel and Tourism Division, and ask for the Agritourism Liaison.
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This Month's Featured Destination:

Enjoy An Apple Cider Slush
at the Oldest Commercial Fruit Farm in Kansas

Original barn at Rees Fruit Farm

What’s the best way to beat the heat? Many folks around Topeka think it’s a “Sweet Apple Cider Slush,” available only at the Rees Fruit Farm of Rex and Shannon Rees, located at the junction of K-24 and K-4.

“My customers range from teenagers—just learning how to drive—that come out here for a sweet apple cider slush, to folks in their 70s who have been coming to our farm all their lives,” Rex said.

“The very first ice slush machine was invented right here in Topeka in the 1960s by a fellow named Clarence Wilch, and my father, Norris Rees, bought the fourth slush machine ever made,” he said. “Dad said he didn’t have anything else to mix with it but pure apple cider. We’ve been selling them ever since.”

The sweet apple cider slush has absolutely no additives, not even water or sugar. All it needs is crushed ice and apple cider. They use a rack and cloth cider press purchased in the 1960s to press the cider, with large windows so visitors can watch the process. All the cider is UV pasteurized before it is sold to the public.

The Rees Fruit Farm has a 2,500 sq. foot roadside market open year-round, specializing in apples, peaches, and berries, but moving more and more to additional fruits, and lots of vegetables. Dating the family farm back to approximately 1882 and the orchard to about 1901, Rex says that their’s is the oldest commercial fruit farm in Kansas.

“About 90% of our business today is retail at the roadside market or at three farmers’ markets in Topeka,” he said. “My wholesale business now is almost entirely apple cider, sold to groceries in about a 30-mile radius from the farm.”

Rex also had found an interesting market for fruit hardwoods to be used for smoking meat on the barbeque grill. He said that when they take out an apple tree, a cord of the wood sells for about $300 to out-of-town buyers. The limbs sell in the market for $7.95 a bushel, and even the sawdust sells for 39 cents a pound. He said he has apple trees planted not for the apples, but specifically for the wood. The apple market has changed too much.

Rex said his father used to have 10 varieties of summer apples alone, such as the Lodi apples that Rex grows. These early varieties were ripe and up for sale in late July. Rex refers to these as “summer cooking apples,” which he describes as “good for apple sauce, but not as tasty as the apples that come later.” These summer apples used to be popular just because they were the first apples of the year, but times have changed.

“Apples have become a commodity, and though the ones in the grocery stores certainly aren’t quite as good as those grown locally and picked fresh, you can get a pretty decent apple year round now” he lamented. “We put in 12 months of labor for a fairly short harvest season, so when you combine that with the commodity situation, it’s time to diversify.”

Rees Fruit Farm now grows and sells a long list of other fruits and vegetables, beginning with asparagus in the spring and continuing to a sizable fall season with 4-acres of pumpkin patch with photo opportunities and all the trimmings-pumpkins, squash, straw, cornstalks, Indian Corn, and birdhouse and apple gourds. In addition to the sweet apple cider slush and regular cider, they also sell apple donuts and they are perfecting an apple-flavored, soft-serve ice cream.

In the fall, the kitchen goes full tilt, producing apple crisps, caramel apples, and smor kits (marshmallows, chocolate & graham crackers). They provide free bonfires in the evening on weekends, and offer tractor-pulled hayrides for a dollar per person.

While they do not have pick your own apples, they do grow a number of different pick-your-own crops, depending on the season and the annual productivity. The pick-your own crops include blackberries, raspberries, cherries, grapes, and pumpkins.

Norris Rees drives a hayride through the orchard

The Rees Fruit Farm uses a combination of billboards, radio, newspaper, and direct mail to promote their produce, in addition to the invaluable word-of-mouth promotion that comes from more than a century of being the area’s fruit and vegetable market. The most effective advertising, Rex said, is their direct mail, based on a sign-up form available at the farm.

Rex said that four years ago, he didn’t see a reason to participate in the farmer’s markets, since they were only open one day a week and he was already open all seven. But he decided that it might have an advantage as a marketing technique, stuffing a brochure inside every shopper’s bag along with their purchase. To his surprise, the sales were good and continue to get better, and now he’s expanded to three farmer’s markets, and sees the sales there as a major plus.

“I think it’s a convenience thing,” Rex mused, “More and more folks want the taste and nutrition of fresh vegetables, and they understand the importance of buying locally, so if I bring the fruits and vegetables to them, they seem eager to meet me at the market.”

Like many established farmers, Rex seems to be a bit of a philosopher. “There’s three things that help us,” he said. “We’re a family farm, so there’s less debt load than a new business. We’ve got a great location. And we’ve got a well-known history.”

Shannon, Rex and Shadyne Rees

“I think it’s a great lifestyle. It’s fun. I enjoy working with the public and trying to figure out how they think. I read the other day that the majority of the people are now 3 generations removed from the farm. That means that even their grandpa lived in the city-there’s no such thing as visiting grandpa on the farm now.”

“It’s a new world to them. They want to know why there is dirt on the zucchini, or why the peaches are still warm—that’s called sunlight—we pick them fresh because peaches don’t even get their sugar until about the last 10 days.”

"I may do more farmer’s markets in the future, but I won’t do a storefront. I want these people to have the chance to come to the farm!”

“The bottom line is that there is no way I should have to work this hard to make money. You have to want to be a farmer. And I do.”