Rotten to the Core — and loving every minute

Art Laubenstein has worked at a lot of jobs through the years — Ozaukee County Sheriff’s deputy and detective, county supervisor, dairy farmer, parks attendant and two-plus years in the military. 

But the one constant for him and his wife Janice has been apples grown at their Rotten to the Core apple orchard on River Park Road in rural Saukville.

And if you go to buy some of their 17 varieties of apples, you’re just as likely to leave with a bushel of jokes and one-liners.

“They come from his head,” Janice said recently while standing in the orchard.

Not that all his jokes are funny. Or new. 

“Sometimes I just roll my eyes. ‘Yeah, like I haven’t heard that one six times already,’” she said.

Hence the name of the orchard, Rotten to the Core. It replaced the former name, T and A Orchard. The “A” stood for apples. 

They changed the name so that people could wear their T-shirts to church, the couple said.

The Laubensteins, who married in 1968, bought the orchard in 1976 from Art’s parents, who had farmed there since the mid-1940s. They had 32 milk cows, hogs and farmed 88 acres, plus owning another 70 acres or so of woodland and swamp.

Through the years, the Laubensteins got rid of the cows and hogs and sold off the farmland and woods so that today they have 9.3 acres, mostly devoted to the orchard and its 85 trees. 

Only one of the original trees planted by his parents remains.

“We have 35 young trees planted. We just keep adding stuff,” Art said. “This fall, we’re going to cut two old trees off.”

Rotten to the Core is not a you-pick-em operation that allows customers to go into the orchard and select their own.

“I don’t want people falling out of the trees,” Art said, standing in a roadside shed filled with bushels of apples, each one marked with a customer’s name.

“We keep a book with names and numbers and what they usually order,” Art said. “When  (the apples) are ready, we give them a call.”

This year has been unusual for the number of new customers stopping by, he said, suggesting the Covid-19-related lockdown is the cause. 

“This year with the pandemic, there have been a lot of new people,” he said. “They must need something to do.”

Customers are welcome to walk through the orchard and pick up apples for free to make sauce or cider, and he doesn’t dicker over prices too hard, Art said.

“We let anybody and their brother come in to pick up apples from the ground,” he said. “We want to be done selling apples by the first week of November.”

Art said he picks nine to 12 bushels of apples a day during the season using a Brownie Lift, and he does all the spraying and pruning.

“We go through 300 to 350 bushels a year,” he said. 

The Laubensteins’ two black Labradors, Bell and Lily, are in charge of greeting customers, and their granddaughter Skyler is in charge of making T-shirts, signs and maintaining the orchard’s online presence, as well as overseeing shed operations.

Art usually starts his day at Big Joe’s on Highway A just west of Fredonia, where he meets up with friends for coffee.

That’s where he learns most of his jokes, Janice said.

“They yuck it up and laugh their butts off,” she said.

Then it’s off to work for the Ozaukee County Parks Department, where Art works 25 to 30 hours a week, planting flowers and maintaining grounds.

“I work 6 to 1, and then I get out of here by 6:30 each night. I get my hours in and have Friday off,” he said.

“I cannot sit there and watch TV. That does not interest me in the least.”