Motorists zipping down U.S. Highway 81 might glimpse apple trees to the west as they cruise by the turn to Enola. The 16 residents of the village between Norfolk and Madison are outnumbered by the drivers who detour at the white billboard painted with an apple and the name: DeGroot Orchard.

Autumn visitors arrive to the scent of apples, wooden bins overflowing with varieties of the fruit that range from sweet to tart, jars of honey and bottles of fresh cider, colorful gourds and plentiful pumpkins. Selling homegrown produce from their roadside market has been a DeGroot family tradition since at least 1916.  

Children’s wagons stand ready beside the Apple Barn. The youngsters race along looking for just the right pumpkins to carve into jack-o’-lanterns at home. One happy 2-year-old girl carefully places every pumpkin she sees into the wagon. The child’s dad, just as carefully, replaces each one back in the patch behind her. Somehow, at the end of an hour, the toddler and her older brother are riding back to the roadside stand atop a wagonful of pumpkins. Dad is pulling the laughable load, and Mom is snapping pictures.

When they reach the Apple Barn, ready to pay for pumpkins and pick up a bag of apples, Cindy DeGroot greets the visitors with warmth and generosity like long-lost friends. She has met some memorable people here over the years: the TV chef from the East who stopped to shop and share a recipe, and the Florida man who worked on the Apollo 13 moon mission but liked Northeast Nebraska apples almost as much as aviation.

DeGroot loves their stories. She loves to talk apples too, endlessly answering questions about which ones bake better and which are best for chomping. The DeGroot family devotes 30 acres of their farm to grow 22 varieties of apples – Gala, Jonathan, Winesap, Braeburn and Golden Delicious, to name a flavorful few. The DeGroot grandsons like thier apples best fresh off the tree, but Cindy’s husband, Tom, loves his apples in pies. “I don’t know many guys who don’t eat apple pie,” she said. The DeGroots also grow melons, pumpkins and squash.

Tom, Cindy and their son, Todd, joined Tom’s parents in the orchard operation when he returned from serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1972, just as his dad, Bill, joined his parents’ farm business after returning home from WWII.  Prior to the war, Bill had worked alongside his parents, Anton and Mildred, his whole life.

Cindy knew only two things about apples when she married into the family: Apples were either red or yellow, and they tasted good or didn’t.

She began learning more about apples as her husband’s family replanted their aging orchard with 4,000 new trees. The fruit forest would mature to replace trees planted by family founders after the 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard destroyed the DeGroots’ first orchard.

“Tom’s parents were good teachers. We were just helping them like any other young Nebraska farm couple,” Cindy said. “No doubt it was the same way for Tom’s father, learning from those who came before him.”

Tom and Cindy are good teachers, too. Their son, Todd, was 3 when his family put in those new trees. He even got to plant the first one. Now he lives in Enola with his wife, Angie. Along with their sons, Teagan, 12, and Tanner, 10, the family of four makes up a quarter of the village’s population. The boys are the fifth generation of DeGroots to work the  orchard.

“The boys have been helping since they were big enough to bag an apple,” Cindy said. They help where needed, from brushing, sorting and selling apples, to loading pumpkins, squash and gourds. Teagan helps pick apples. Tanner knows how to put on an apple bag but doesn’t pick many apples yet. “I’m too short!” said the boy who stood tall at age 8 to give a guided tour of the family orchard to his own second-grade class.

Annual field trips are special for visiting schools and to the DeGroots, too. So are the families who visit the orchard every year. Cindy remembers one family who has been coming to the orchard for decades, the panel truck they used to drive and how everybody – including the dog – would hop in the back for their trip to pick pumpkins and get their apples. They no longer arrive in Grandpa’s truck, but show up in a convoy of cars loaded with children and grandchildren. Cindy looks forward to their arrival every year. “What an honor, to be part of their tradition,” she said.

Loyal customers are as important to the seasonal business as sun and rain, seasonal temperatures and stormless skies. The roadside stand draws hungry fruit fans passing north and south on U.S. Highway 81, that intercontinental roadway connecting North America and South America. A bulk of the orchard’s regular customers come from Madison, Norfolk, Columbus and other Eastern Nebraska communities.   

The orchard has been that way since Tom’s grandfather, Anton DeGroot, planted the first trees, berries and melons. Tom recalls a 100-pound watermelon his grandfather grew. These days, people want something smaller that will fit in the refrigerator.

More than a century after DeGroot’s Orchard took root, the attraction remains a connection to the land for the family and its generations of customers.

Customers appreciate the traditions of the apple orchard and pumpkin patch. “How do you say thank you to all the families of Northeast Nebraska and beyond who have supported us through good times and bad, making it possible for us to serve them through generations, while preserving our way of life?” Cindy said.

The DeGroots’ operation is weather dependent like any Nebraska farm. There have been late and early frosts, drought,  and high summer temps that damaged  their crops. They had to call the 2020 season short after a sudden and devastating storm. The Honeycrisps were ripe and ready for picking when hailstones – some round, some flat and others shaped with sharp, icy spikes – fell from stormy skies and decimated the tender apple crop. The irregular hailstones chunked out bits of apple and even cut into the hard rinds of the pumpkins.

Months of the family’s hardwork was erased within minutes, their entire crop destroyed. Within a few days, the apples the family had picked before the storm were sold out, and their hopeful season was over.

A visit to DeGroot’s is plenty sweet. Homegrown fruit. Three generations picking, sorting and selling together. Fresh air. Family fun. And whether passersby are new to town or longtime area residents – when they pull off the asphalt and into the orchard, 105 years of flavorful family tradition is ripe for the picking.