A free-entry, pay-for-what-you-pick orchard that is probably the cheapest real fall stop near Indianapolis - and whose own website is stale enough that you should phone before you drive.
There is no gate admission - the orchard, apple barn and grounds are free to enter and you pay for what you pick or buy. U-pick apples are priced by bag size, and hayrides on October weekends were listed at $3 per person with children 3 and under free, though that hayride price is from a 2022 write-up and has not been reconfirmed.
Free to walk in. Your spend here is whatever you choose — pumpkins, food, and any paid activities. That makes it a low-risk stop if you are not sure how long the kids will last.
Anderson is the kind of place that has been quietly getting on with it for decades and has not felt much need to keep a website current. That is charming and it is also the main practical problem with planning a visit.
Almost every notable fall farm within half an hour of Indianapolis charges a gate ticket, and those tickets now sit in the $13 to $18 range per person. A family of four is therefore committing $52 to $72 before anyone picks anything. Here, that number is zero. You walk in, you pick apples or pumpkins, and you pay at the Apple Barn on the way out.
That changes the risk profile more than the total. A ticketed farm needs three or four hours to justify itself, which is a long time to hold a two-year-old’s attention and a gamble against the weather. A free orchard is worth going to for forty-five minutes. If it rains, you leave.
Where the money does go is the concession stand: cider, cider slush, caramel apples, elephant ears and fried pies. Four of those is easily $25, fine as long as you decided it in advance rather than at the counter.
Hayrides run on October weekends and have historically carried a small per-person charge. The only figure we have is $3 per person with children three and under free, and it comes from a 2022 write-up rather than the orchard. Four seasons of inflation later, we would not plan around it. Ask on the phone.
We want to be direct about the state of the record here. The orchard’s homepage loads but appears not to have been updated - it advertises a u-pick opening date on a day that is not a Saturday in 2026. The hours page would not load for us at all. A third-party directory lists daily hours across the season, but we could not corroborate them against the farm, so we have deliberately left the hours field empty rather than repeat a figure that might be wrong.
None of that means the orchard is not operating - everything in the record suggests a working, long-established farm. It means a two-minute call to 317-831-4181 replaces every guess on this page. Ask whether pumpkins are ready, whether hayrides are running, and what time they close.
Apples first - this is an orchard, and picking is the anchor. Pumpkins, raspberries, plums and chestnuts also appear on the u-pick list, an unusually broad range worth asking about by season. The Apple Barn is the farm store and the checkout. Beyond that: a playground, a straw pile, a fishing lake and the concession stand.
The Apple Festival and Craft Fair is the one date worth building a weekend around if you can find out when it is: 90-plus vendors alongside the working patch turns a picking trip into an afternoon. It will also be the busiest day the orchard has.
Morgan County runs on the same clock as the rest of central Indiana: apples first, pumpkins from late September, and the first hard frost ends the outdoor season. The last week of September through mid-October is the overlap if you want both on one trip - but confirm it, because on this farm we genuinely do not know.
We cannot tell you, and we are not going to guess. The orchard had published no 2026 season dates, days or hours we could verify when we checked in August 2026 - its homepage was still carrying a u-pick opening date that does not fall on a Saturday in 2026, which is a clear sign the page has not been refreshed. The homepage does state produce runs July through November, and hayrides have historically run on October weekends. Call 317-831-4181 and ask for two things: whether the pumpkins are ready, and whether hayrides are running on your date.
Ninety minutes to two hours for picking, the playground and a stop at the concession stand. Longer if you land on an Apple Festival weekend, which is a different scale of visit.
The Apple Festival and Craft Fair is the busy one, drawing 90-plus vendors alongside the patch. Outside that, a free-entry orchard on a Morgan County road is a low-key place on a weekday and a normal fall-weekend crowd on a Saturday. October weekends, when the hayrides run, are the peak.
Not published. An orchard of this type in Morgan County will almost certainly have an unpaved lot; October in central Indiana is wet, so plan for soft ground after rain.
You need certainty before you leave the house. The published information here is the thinnest of any farm in the Indianapolis region and the orchard's own site has not been updated with a current calendar. Skip it too if you want rides, mazes and a bundled day out - that is not what this is.
No. The orchard, apple barn and grounds are free to enter and you pay for what you pick or buy. U-pick apples are priced by bag size. Hayrides on October weekends have historically carried a small per-person charge - listed at $3 with children 3 and under free in a 2022 write-up - but that figure has not been reconfirmed.
Unknown. The orchard has not published a 2026 season calendar we could verify, and its homepage appears to be carrying dates from an earlier year. Its stated produce season is July through November. Call 317-831-4181 before making the trip.
The orchard's signature event, an Apple Festival and Craft Fair drawing 90-plus vendors alongside the pumpkin patch and straw pile. The record does not give 2026 dates for it, so confirm by phone.
A children's playground and a straw pile, plus a concession stand doing cider, cider slush, caramel apples and fried pies, and a fishing lake on the property.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission is free. There is no gate admission - the orchard, apple barn and grounds are free to enter and you pay for what you pick or buy. U-pick apples are priced by bag size, and hayrides on October weekends were listed at $3 per person with children 3 and under free, though that hayride price is from a 2022 write-up and has not been reconfirmed.
369 East Greencastle Road, Mooresville, IN 46158, in Morgan County. It is one of 8 patches we track in Indianapolis Region.
We track 8 patches in Indianapolis Region, 1 of which are free to walk into. Entry here costs nothing, which puts it in the minority even in a region with several free options.
One caveat worth repeating: this farm had not published its 2026 dates when we last checked, while 6 of the 8 patches we track in Indianapolis Region had. Treat any date you see elsewhere as last year's until the farm confirms it.
There is 1 other patch we track in Morgan County. All Indianapolis Region patches →
andersonorchard.com · pumpkinpatchesandmore.org
Checked August 2026.