Arends Orchard

Our take

What the record actually confirms

Arends Orchard is located at 22001 N State Route 78 in Laura, Peoria County, with a phone number of 309-446-3034. Unlike most other entries in this file, Arends doesn’t appear to run a standalone commercial website — its listed web presence is a WordPress site (arendsorchard.wordpress.com), and the source note flags this as a lower-confidence source than a dedicated business site, since WordPress blogs and Facebook pages tend to be updated less consistently than a proper commercial site built around seasonal information.

Hours are confirmed as 8am to 6pm daily. The research notes describe Arends as operating in this part of Peoria County since 1956, a real, checkable multi-decade history.

One of the longer variety lists in this file

What sets Arends apart most clearly is its variety roster: sixteen named apples, more than most other orchards in this collection list individually. Alongside familiar names like Honeycrisp, Gala, Fuji, and McIntosh, the list includes several less-common varieties — Braeburn, Arkansas Black, Golden Supreme, Winesap, Paula Reds, and Wolf River. Arkansas Black and Wolf River in particular are heritage-leaning varieties not commonly stocked at every orchard, and their presence here is a genuinely useful, checkable specific for anyone whose interest runs toward less mainstream apples. The listing tags also reference “18 Varieties” as a round-number summary, close to but not exactly matching the sixteen individually named — worth noting as a minor discrepancy between the tag and the itemized list, though both point to a broad, well-stocked orchard.

Pricing structure without a stated price

The record confirms apples are sold in three unit sizes — half-bushel, peck, and quarter peck — which is useful for understanding how purchases are structured here, similar to the bag-tier systems used at a few other orchards in this file. What’s missing is the actual price attached to any of those units. That’s a real gap for anyone trying to budget a visit, and it’s the kind of detail that’s easy to assume based on nearby orchards’ pricing, which is exactly the kind of plausible-sounding guess this record avoids making.

Hayride, corn maze, and a play area

Beyond picking, the record confirms a hayride, a corn maze, and a play area — a fairly standard family-orchard activity set, in line with several other central-Illinois entries in this file, though on the more modest end compared to the larger ride-and-attraction lineups at some bigger operations.

The website and location caveats

Two sourcing caveats are worth stating plainly. First, because Arends doesn’t appear to run a dedicated commercial website, this record leans more heavily on a WordPress blog, Facebook page, and general aggregator listings than most other entries here — solid enough to establish the basics, but less authoritative than a business’s own current pricing and hours page. Second, Laura itself is an unincorporated community without its own official coordinates, so the latitude and longitude in this record are an approximation based on its description as being near Williamsfield, Peoria County, rather than a precise geocode of the farm’s exact address.

Bottom line for planning

Arends Orchard brings real depth on one specific front — an unusually long and specific apple variety list spanning familiar and heritage varieties alike, backed by nearly seventy years of operating history. But with no confirmed pricing, no dedicated business website, and an approximated location, this is a record where a phone call to 309-446-3034 before visiting is especially worthwhile, both to confirm current prices and to get precise driving directions.