The old Erwin Orchards under new ownership, and the one Blake's site that actually prints its Funland prices - $9.95 a child midweek against $12.95 at weekends, with a play list aimed squarely at under-eights.
Funland admission: $9.95 per child Monday-Friday and $12.95 per child Saturday and Sunday; adults and seniors are $3 off the regular price; children 2 and under free with a paying adult. Parking and the farm store are free. U-pick and food are extra.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $39.80 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.
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.
The first thing to settle is the identity question, because it sends people away unnecessarily. This is Erwin Orchards. Blake’s bought the South Lyon farm and rebranded it, and a Yelp listing for Erwin Orchards still carries a CLOSED flag that reflects the name change rather than the state of the business. The farm is open. It is just under a different sign.
The second thing is that this is the only Blake’s site in the group that publishes what its activity area costs, and that alone makes it easier to plan than Armada. Funland is $9.95 per child Monday to Friday and $12.95 per child Saturday and Sunday. Children 2 and under are free with a paying adult. Adults and seniors are $3 off the regular price - which, read literally, makes an adult cheaper than a child, at $6.95 midweek and $9.95 at weekends. That is an unusual structure and worth confirming at the window, but it is what the farm publishes.
Two adults and two children over 2, on a Friday, works out at roughly $33.80 at those rates. The same group on a Saturday is about $45.80. That $12 gap is not enormous, but it stacks with the crowd difference, and Funland is open on Fridays, which makes Friday the clear pick for anyone who can take it.
What the wristband does not cover is u-pick apples or food. Neither has a published price, so treat them as an open-ended addition. Parking and the farm store are free, which means a family that only wants cider and donuts can visit without paying anything at a gate at all.
Read the activity list closely: jumping pillows, a 3D barn, straw mountain, a giant tire sandbox, sand diggers, Amish play structures, a hillbilly wagon, the Barnyard 500 tricycle track, a John Deere pedal speedway. Those are toddler and early-primary attractions. There is a corn maze and there are inflatables and a sports zone, but there is nothing here that will hold a twelve-year-old for an afternoon. If your children have aged out of pedal tractors, you will get a short visit and a full price.
For the two-to-eight bracket, though, this is a strong site. Seventeen listed things, most of them the kind children cycle back to three or four times, and a train and wagon rides to break up the running around.
This is the weak point of the record and the thing most likely to waste your morning. The South Lyon location page does not print hours. It says to call, and warns hours change with the weather. The Blake’s Funland page gives Friday to Sunday, 10:00am to 6:00pm. A metro Detroit cider mill round-up lists the farm as open 9:00am to 5:00pm daily. The reconciliation that makes sense is that the store runs daily while Funland runs weekends - but the farm does not say that, and we are not going to pretend it does. Phone 248-437-0150.
Weather-dependent hours are also a real signal. A farm that reserves the right to close early when it rains is telling you something about the ground here, and October in southeast Michigan is wet. Boots, not trainers, and check before you drive out on a grey morning.
Dogs. Blake’s permits leashed pets at South Lyon and at Blake’s Backyard in Almont, and nowhere else in the group. Among metro Detroit orchards generally, that puts this farm in a small minority, and it is worth a longer drive if leaving the dog at home is the thing that usually kills the plan.
Funland runs Friday to Sunday, 10:00am to 6:00pm, so Friday is the value day: the weekday child rate of $9.95 applies and you miss the Saturday crush. The farm's own location page refuses to commit to hours and says only to call, and warns hours change with the weather, so 248-437-0150 before you set off is not optional here.
Three to four hours. With seventeen listed activities in the Funland area, most of them repeat-use rather than one-and-done, an hour is not enough to justify the wristband.
Funland's Friday-to-Sunday window puts most of the season's demand into three days, and the weekend rate of $12.95 does not appear to thin it. South Lyon sits in the western Oakland County commuter belt, so Saturday afternoons in October are the peak of the peak.
Free - Blake's does not charge for parking at its sites. Assume an unpaved farm lot; western Oakland County fields hold water after October rain.
Not published. The farm store and bakery are the flat part of the site. Straw mountain, the sandbox, the jumping pillows and the corn maze are all soft or uneven ground by design.
Your children are 10 and up. The activity list is heavily weighted to small-child play equipment and the thrill ceiling is low. Skip it too if you cannot reach the farm by phone, because published hours conflict between sources and the farm itself tells you to call.
This is the western half of the Blake's map - the Armada sites are more than an hour away across metro Detroit, so do not plan to combine them. Long Family Orchard in Commerce Township is the closer Oakland County cider mill if you want a second stop, though its 2026 dates were still unannounced in late August.
Yes. Blake's bought the South Lyon farm and rebranded it, so it now trades as Blake's Orchard & Cider Mill - South Lyon. Old listings, including a Yelp page marked Erwin Orchards - CLOSED, still circulate. That reflects the name change, not a closed farm.
$9.95 per child Monday to Friday and $12.95 per child Saturday and Sunday. Adults and seniors are $3 off the regular price, and children 2 and under are free with a paying adult. Parking and the farm store are free; u-pick and food cost extra.
Funland is listed as 10:00am to 6:00pm Friday to Sunday on the Blake's Funland page. The South Lyon location page itself says only Open, please call for hours and warns hours change with the weather, and a metro Detroit round-up lists the farm as open 9:00am to 5:00pm daily. The farm store being open daily while Funland runs weekends only would reconcile those, but that is our inference, not a published statement. Call 248-437-0150.
Yes, this is one of only two Blake's locations that allows leashed pets, along with Blake's Backyard in Almont. The Armada orchard and Blake's Big Apple do not permit them.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: Farm store daily; Funland Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission is free. Funland admission: $9.95 per child Monday-Friday and $12.95 per child Saturday and Sunday; adults and seniors are $3 off the regular price; children 2 and under free with a paying adult. Parking and the farm store are free. U-pick and food are extra.
61475 Silver Lake Road, South Lyon, MI 48178, in Oakland County. It is one of 10 patches we track in Metro Detroit.
We track 10 patches in Metro Detroit, 9 of which are free to walk into. At $9.95 a head this one sits below the regional median of $18, undercutting 1 of the 1 paid patches we track here. Entry here costs nothing, which puts it in the minority even in a region with several free options.
What sets it apart locally: it has rides and play structures, which most Metro Detroit patches on our list do not.
One caveat worth repeating: this farm had not published its 2026 dates when we last checked, while 5 of the 10 patches we track in Metro Detroit had. Treat any date you see elsewhere as last year's until the farm confirms it.
There are 4 other patches we track in Oakland County. All Metro Detroit patches →
Map pin is set to the town centre. Navigate to the street address above, not the pin.
blakefarms.com
Checked August 2026.