A produce-first market with more than 15 pumpkin varieties and around 26 kinds of squash, free to walk into and closed on Sundays — which is the mistake most weekend visitors to Petoskey will make.
No admission charge and no activity prices are published. Pumpkins, squash, gourds, apples, hay bales and cornstalks are sold by the item.
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.
Bill’s is a produce market, not an attraction farm, and the reason to make the drive in October is selection rather than entertainment. More than 15 pumpkin varieties, plus pie pumpkins kept separately. Around 26 kinds of squash. Gourds, apples, hay bales and cornstalks alongside them.
That is a different kind of visit from a farm park, and it suits a different kind of person. If you are cooking, decorating, or simply tired of choosing between three sizes of the same orange pumpkin, this is the better stop. If you have a five-year-old who wants a hayride, it is not.
Monday to Saturday, 9am to 5pm. Closed Sundays.
In Michigan, where the Sunday afternoon farm visit is close to a regional habit, that is the detail that will catch people. Anyone up in Petoskey for a weekend, with Saturday committed to something else, will arrive on Sunday to a closed market. It is worth putting in the calendar rather than trusting to memory.
The 5pm close is also earlier than most of the region’s markets, and by the last week of October it lands at dusk. This is a morning or early-afternoon stop.
Nothing at the gate. There is no admission and no activity pricing published, because there is nothing ticketed. You pay for what you carry out, and the market publishes no per-item prices online, so the total is entirely within your control at the counter.
The one piece of value advice worth giving: if you are baking, buy the pie pumpkins rather than the carving ones. The market keeps them as a separate category for a reason, and a carving pumpkin makes watery, stringy pie no matter how good it looked on the porch. Getting that right is worth more than any discount.
Fall stock starts arriving as early as mid-August and runs through Halloween. That is a long window, and it has a practical implication most people miss: an early-season visit gets the fullest and freshest selection, not the picked-over one. By the first days of November, at a market that publishes no closing date, the fall side is thinning.
For northern Michigan specifically, the calendar runs earlier than it does downstate. Emmet County gets its frosts sooner, the leaves turn sooner, and the tourist season around Petoskey and the lakeshore compresses accordingly. Late September through mid-October is the sweet spot for both the produce and the drive.
A family fun section is mentioned alongside the fall produce, though the record gives no detail on what it contains, so we are not going to guess. Fall decorative arrangements are made up on site, which is useful if you want the porch display without assembling it yourself. And the market runs year-round, switching to Christmas trees in winter, which tells you this is a business built on repeat local custom rather than one autumn rush.
That is ultimately the character of the place: a market that happens to be very good at autumn, rather than an autumn attraction that happens to sell produce.
Monday to Saturday, 9am to 5pm. Closed Sundays, which is unusual for a fall farm stop and the single easiest thing to get wrong here. No specific 2026 fall opening or closing dates are published, but the market says fall stock starts arriving as early as mid-August and runs through Halloween. That points at late September and October as the window with the fullest selection, and at the first days of November as the point where the pickings thin.
Thirty to sixty minutes. It is a market, and choosing among that many squash varieties is the part that takes the time.
Not documented. A market open six days a week with a 9am-to-5pm day spreads its traffic more evenly than a weekend festival does, though Saturday will inevitably carry the most of it given the Sunday closure pushes the whole weekend onto one day.
Not published. Expect a market lot rather than a field, and expect it to be tighter on October Saturdays.
Sunday is your only free day — it is closed. Skip it too if you want a farm day out with attractions; there is a family fun area mentioned but no rides, maze or ticketed activities in the record, and this is a produce market first.
No. It runs Monday to Saturday, 9am to 5pm, and is closed on Sundays. For a fall farm stop that is unusual, and it is easy to get caught by on a weekend trip to Petoskey.
Nothing to enter. Pumpkins, squash, gourds, apples, hay bales and cornstalks are all sold by the item, and no admission or activity prices are published.
More than 15 varieties plus dedicated pie pumpkins, alongside roughly 26 kinds of squash and a gourd selection. That is considerably more choice than a typical patch, and it is the main reason to come.
The market says fall items arrive as early as mid-August and are stocked through Halloween. No specific closing date is published, so expect thinner pickings after October 31 and call 231-347-6735 if you are going in November.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: Monday to Saturday; closed Sundays. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission is free. No admission charge and no activity prices are published. Pumpkins, squash, gourds, apples, hay bales and cornstalks are sold by the item.
4450 East Mitchell Road, Petoskey, MI 49770, in Emmet County. It is one of 3 patches we track in Northern Michigan.
We track 3 patches in Northern Michigan, 3 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 1 of the 3 patches we track in Northern Michigan had. Treat any date you see elsewhere as last year's until the farm confirms it.
Map pin is set to the town centre. Navigate to the street address above, not the pin.
billsfarmmarket.com
Checked August 2026.