A $12 weekday ticket that already includes a small pumpkin, a hayride and the petting barn is the best straight-value pumpkin admission in North Texas, and an 8am daily opening across a season running to November 25 makes it the easiest one to visit on your own terms.
$12 per person Monday-Friday (includes one small pumpkin from the patch, petting-barn feed, hayride, roping pen and hay maze); $15 per person Saturday-Sunday (adds the farm train). Children under 2 free.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $48.00 in admission alone at the posted starting rate, before pumpkins, food, parking or any add-on listed above. Most families end up well north of that once they are through the gate.
Most Texas pumpkin farms price the gate low and then meter you afterwards - a ticket to walk in, then tokens, then wristbands, then the pumpkin itself at the exit. This one does close to the opposite, and that single structural difference is why it is worth the drive north.
The weekday ticket is $12 a head, and it includes a small pumpkin from the patch, feed for the petting barn, the hayride, the roping pen and the hay maze. Do the family-of-four arithmetic and you are at $48 with four pumpkins already in hand and nothing outstanding except food. The weekend ticket is $15 and adds the farm train, so a Saturday family of four is $60. There is no version of that math where this reads as expensive, and there is no add-on list waiting to double it.
Daily, 8am to 8pm, from September 19 to November 25. Read that twice, because almost nothing else in the region offers it.
September and early October afternoons in North Texas are hot enough to shorten a farm visit to whatever the smallest child will tolerate. An 8am arrival removes that problem entirely: you get the animals before the heat, the light before it goes flat, and the property before the day’s crowd forms. On a weekday in late September you may effectively have the place to yourself. By late October the heat argument weakens and the calculation shifts to light and crowds, but the morning still wins.
The other end of the season is worth noting for a different reason. A November 25 closing puts this farm weeks beyond the point where most Dallas-Fort Worth patches have pulled the pumpkins and moved on to Christmas trees. If you missed October entirely - illness, travel, a full soccer calendar - this is one of very few places in the region still open in the third week of November.
This is not a festival. The activity list is a petting barn, a hayride, a hay maze, a roping pen, photo setups and a weekend train, plus a cafe and a farm store. That suits a preschooler or an early-elementary child very well and will bore a nine-year-old who was promised a corn maze and a coaster. Set the expectation on the drive up, not in the parking area.
The farm does not say where its pumpkins come from. Nothing on its site claims they are grown at Gunter, and we are not going to assume it either way - across most of the state outside the West Texas growing belt, patches truck pumpkins in and build the day around them. Since a pumpkin comes with the ticket here, the sourcing question matters less than it would at a farm charging by the pound at the gate.
Two things about getting there. First, this is roughly an hour north of Dallas on Highway 289, close to the Grayson County line, so a family of four is spending two hours in the car on top of the two hours at the farm - plan the day around that rather than treating it as a quick stop. Second, and more likely to actually cause trouble, the farm’s own website prints a ZIP code that belongs to Prosper rather than Gunter. Enter the street address, not the ZIP, into whatever is navigating.
Dogs are the last thing worth flagging, because it is such an unusual allowance. Well-behaved leashed dogs are welcome here, in a state where roaming barnyard animals mean almost every comparable farm bans pets at the gate. If the dog normally forces a second person to stay home, this is the trip that does not.
The season runs September 19 through November 25, 2026, open daily from 8am to 8pm. That is an unusually generous window on both axes. Any weekday, Monday to Friday, is both cheaper ($12 rather than $15) and quieter. Within the day, the 8am opening is the single most useful thing on the schedule: through late September and early October a North Texas afternoon is hot and glaring, and being on the property at 8am gets you soft light, cool air and an empty petting barn. If you want the farm train, which only runs at weekends, take a Saturday or Sunday morning instead and accept the extra $3 a head.
Ninety minutes to two hours for the pumpkin farm itself. Add half an hour if you are eating at the cafe, and more if the hardware and feed store on the same site turns into an actual errand, which for local families it often does. Nothing here is designed to consume a whole day.
A ten-week season with daily opening spreads demand more thinly than almost any patch in the region, which is a real advantage. October Saturdays and Sundays will still fill, particularly late morning, and the pricing structure actively pushes families toward the weekend for the train. Weekday mornings should be genuinely quiet.
Not published. This is a rural highway property with a working feed store, so expect gravel or dirt rather than a paved lot, and expect it to soften after rain.
Not described in the material available to us. Hayride boarding, the hay maze and the petting barn are all likely to involve uneven ground and at least one step up. Call 972-382-4995 in advance if that matters to your group.
You want rides, coasters, haunts or a big attraction count. This is a small country-store farm with a handful of gentle activities, and it will feel thin to a family of older children expecting a festival. Skip the weekend too if the only difference you care about is price - the extra $3 per person buys the farm train and nothing else.
The site itself does double duty: a farm cafe and a working hardware and feed store share the address, so the pumpkin trip can absorb an errand. Beyond that, it is a Highway 289 drive roughly an hour north of Dallas, so treat the road time as part of the outing rather than an interruption to it.
The $12 weekday ticket covers one small pumpkin from the patch, feed for the petting barn, the hayride, the roping pen and the hay maze. The $15 weekend ticket adds the farm train. Children under 2 get in free.
$48 on a weekday or $60 at the weekend, before food or anything bought at the store. Because the weekday ticket bundles a small pumpkin per person, that $48 is closer to an all-in figure than the equivalent number at most metro patches.
No. It now operates at Preston Trail Farms in Gunter, on Highway 289 in Grayson County. Any listing that still shows a separate Celina address is historical.
Yes, well-behaved leashed dogs are welcome. That is rare among Texas pumpkin farms, most of which ban pets outright because of roaming livestock.
September 19 – November 25, 2026. Daily, Monday-Sunday. Hours: 8:00am-8:00pm daily.
Admission starts at $12 per person. $12 per person Monday-Friday (includes one small pumpkin from the patch, petting-barn feed, hayride, roping pen and hay maze); $15 per person Saturday-Sunday (adds the farm train). Children under 2 free.
15102 TX-289, Gunter, TX 75058, in Grayson County. It is one of 6 patches we track in Dallas-Fort Worth.
We track 6 patches in Dallas-Fort Worth. At $12 a head this one sits right on the regional median of $12, undercutting 1 of the 5 paid patches we track here.
Its season runs about 68 days against a regional average of 46, so it is a notably longer window than most of its neighbours, which takes the pressure off picking a weekend.
What sets it apart locally: it has a market, bakery or taproom, which most Dallas-Fort Worth patches on our list do not.
Map pin is set to the town centre. Navigate to the street address above, not the pin.
prestontrailfarms.com
Checked August 2026.