Making hay?

A razor-eyed husky finally gave in on a stare-down with a rooftop goat and turned its attention to some nearby young turkeys, safely caged. A few feet away, a pygmy stallion slowly pulled a wagon full of tykes past a huge -- and inviting -- haystack. The honeyed scent of apple s'mores wafted about as handfuls of small fry romped around a corn crib.

But Ainsley McBean had homed in on a single target. "Apples, apples, yum!" she shrieked, churning her almost-3-year-old legs up a steep slope toward drooping Zestar trees. Her mom, Courtney, holding 5-day-old Avery in a baby sling, hollered, "Careful!" but felt no need to chase after her even as Ainsley crested the hill at Minnetonka Orchards and disappeared.

The Minnetrista farm's "agri-tainment" mission started with family fun and tasty treats, but has expanded into blast-from-the-past territory, with classes on yo-yo-making and old-school transports such as antique tractors and the Lilliputian horse-and-buggy.

Of the 49 orchards in the seven-county metro area, Minnetonka Orchards is the leader in terms of entertainment, said C.J. Johnson, outdoors specialist at the Minnesota Department of Tourism. "That's pretty much theirs," said Johnson. "A lot of other orchards or farms with orchards have programs, but I don't know of any that do agri-tainment to the extent that Minnetonka Orchards does."

For brothers Jay and Scott Schaper, the bigger goal is a story as old as the hills dotting this gorgeous pocket of western Hennepin County: keeping the 40-acre farm in the family. Land that was purchased for $800 an acre is now worth 30 times that much, and the Schapers' parents have retired and could use a nest egg.

"My parents are cash-poor and land-rich," said Jay Schaper, "and the developers are salivating at the end of the driveway, leaving proposals. You see the offers, and it's like, wow."

Lowell Schaper, 72, said he "unofficially put [the property] on the market" a couple of years ago. But he never signed on with a Realtor, and his sons came up with a plan to expand the agri-tainment aspect. "It's a year-to-year thing at this point," said Lowell Schaper.

To implement the plan, the sons had to give up their "real" jobs -- Scott, 44, in hydraulic engineering and Jay, 43, in technology. That was a no-brainer, as it turned out.

"If we let this go," said Scott, "I could never drive down Highway 26 again, ever."

A root-bound journey

In plotting their future, the brothers relied heavily on the past, even when their memories were not exactly soft and fuzzy. Their father, a Braniff Airlines pilot, had bought 28 acres in 1971 and built a house on the tallest hill (Lowell and wife Phyllis can see the IDS Tower from their deck). They planted alfalfa and then cucumbers -- "He had this Gedney's Pickle dream," said Jay, chuckling -- before opting for apples in 1976.

That begat a fruit stand, which begat tractor rides, which begat cider and even cider brats (a Lowell Schaper concoction) and, by the mid-1980s, a pick-your-own enterprise -- all of which made for some major chores that often fell to ... guess who?

"As young teenagers, you had to force them to work," said Lowell, "because they'd rather be doing what their buddies were doing, which was virtually nothing, goofing off. But the work's got to get done."

Jay's memories are similar. "We had to plant trees, clear stuff out and everything else," he said. "We didn't understand why, because all our friends were out having fun. Now that we're older, we think, 'Wow, those are chores that really built us.' We need to hang onto that and maybe have other people experience them."

Getting other people to do their chores is only a small part of the business plan, the part where guests pick clean their 3,100 trees. More important is rooting those visitors in the mid-20th century, "that era that's going away because the farms can't make it," Jay noted.

So the cuttings from the apple trees became raw material for the sling-shot-making class. A Girl Scout troop came in and hand-painted animals and tractors on the recycling and garbage cans. Old-school toy tractors became one of the hottest items at the orchard's store (although his-and-hers tractor underwear also is moving well, said store manager Lori MacRander).

And Scott Schaper created what Jay calls a "very confusing" corn maze. "I made it easy to find the middle, but hard to get out," Scott said. "Even I got lost in there the other day."

A growing season

For this enterprise to succeed and fulfill the family patriarch's wish of having his sons buy the land from him, Minnetonka Orchards must be more than a seasonal destination for families, even with nearly 50,000 annual visitors.

Last spring, a 5,000-square-foot reception tent went up on a flat piece of land. Target was among several companies holding retreats on the grounds this year and even had its design team develop packaging ideas for apples while sitting amid the trees. The orchards hosted a wine tasting last spring, and nine weddings already are booked for next year.

"You can't expand the apple season," said Lowell, "but you can expand the event season."

For most visitors, though, simple pleasures provide the allure. A wooden train, for example, was swarming with kids on a recent Saturday despite having no engine or seating.

"Some of these places can be pretty commercial," said Karin Westgate of Minneapolis, her two sons in tow. "This place focuses more on simple activities, the train, the silo, the animals, as opposed to products that are manufactured.

"We forget that kids' imaginations are much more interesting than any product we can make for them. You give them something static, and they'll make it dynamic" -- not a bad description of what the Schaper brothers are aiming to accomplish.

Bill Ward • 612-673-7643