A rare in-city farm minutes off I-95, with two genuinely different visits available: a $6 weekday playground stop with free pick-your-own, or a $15-plus-tax festival weekend with hayrides and the corn maze.
Family Playgrounds admission is $6.00 per person year round (age 2 and under free). On the five fall-festival weekends there is an additional $9.00 per person festival fee, for a total of $15.00 plus tax. Pick-your-own in the front fields carries no admission fee. Pumpkins are $0.90 per pound on top of admission.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $24.00 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.
The useful thing about Braehead is that it is two different outings sold under one name, and the cheaper one is not a consolation prize.
Six dollars a person buys the family playgrounds and the animals, and it runs year round rather than only in fall. The front fields are pick-your-own with no admission fee at all, so a produce trip costs nothing to enter and only what you carry out. For a household with a toddler and a Tuesday morning to fill, this is one of the cheapest legitimate farm outings in the region: $24 for a family of four, or nothing at all if you only want the fields and the market.
What it does not include is the fall content. No hayride, no corn maze. The farm is explicit that hayrides run weekends during the festival, and there is no way to buy your way into them midweek.
Five weekends, September 26 to October 25, Saturdays and Sundays, 9:00am to 6:00pm. The price is built as $6 playground plus a $9 festival add-on, so $15 per person, plus tax. That construction matters when you are budgeting: the headline is not the total. Two adults and two children over 2 is $60 before tax, call it low-sixties after, and that is before pumpkins at $0.90 a pound and before anything from the deli, the ice cream stand, the kettle corn or the rotating food truck.
A realistic weekend family-of-four total, with four modest pumpkins and lunch, lands somewhere near $100. That is not out of line for the region, but it is roughly four times the weekday figure, and the difference buys a hayride through a decorated forest, the corn maze and scavenger hunt, the sunflower walk and the Great Pumpkin photo op.
Most fall farms require a rural drive. This one is on Tyler Street inside the Fredericksburg city limits, close to I-95. For families in the Fredericksburg–Stafford–Spotsylvania corridor, and for anyone breaking a drive between Northern Virginia and Richmond, that removes the single biggest hidden cost of a pumpkin trip: an hour each way on a two-lane road behind everyone else with the same idea. It also means a short visit is viable — you can do ninety minutes here without feeling you wasted the journey, which is not true of a farm forty-five minutes out.
Fredericksburg is not mountain Virginia. Late September and early October afternoons here still run warm, and shade in an open field is whatever the tree line gives you. Front-load your visit toward the morning at the start of the season. At the other end, the festival closes October 25, so the last weekend before Halloween is not available — anyone planning a final-week pumpkin run needs a different farm.
One regional caveat that applies here as everywhere in Virginia: late-September and early-October storm systems soak farm ground, and a field parking area holds that water for days. If a wet week precedes your Saturday, take boots.
Baked goods, produce, dairy and Angus beef, with the deli and ice cream stand alongside. On a weekday, when the festival is shut, the market is the reason a lot of locals come at all — and it makes the $6 playground entry an add-on to a shopping trip rather than the whole outing.
The Fall Harvest Festival runs Saturdays and Sundays across five weekends, September 26 through October 25, 2026, 9:00am to 6:00pm. The farm, market and pick-your-own fields are open daily outside the festival. Weekend mornings are the best of the festival; a weekday morning is the best of the cheap version. Late September afternoons in Fredericksburg can still be hot, so early is not just a crowd strategy at the front of the season.
Two to three hours on a festival weekend, with the hayride, corn maze, sunflower walk and picking. An hour to ninety minutes on a weekday, when the offering is the playgrounds, the animals and the front-field picking.
Five weekends only, in a city of substantial population with easy interstate access. That is concentrated demand by design. Saturday afternoons will be the peak; Sunday mornings are usually the quieter half of a weekend at farms with this shape.
Not published. A farm on Tyler Street inside the city limits may have better ground than a rural field site, but assume grass parking and soft going after rain until you see otherwise.
Not published. Hayrides involve a step up into a wagon and the corn maze and pick-your-own fields are field surfaces. Call 540-899-9848 ahead if this is a factor.
Hayrides and the corn maze are the reason you are going and you can only visit midweek. Those are festival-weekend attractions only. Skip it too if you are counting to the dollar without allowing for tax — the $15 headline is $6 playground plus a $9 festival fee, and tax lands on top.
Family Playgrounds admission is $6.00 per person year round, with ages 2 and under free. On the five fall-festival weekends there is an additional $9.00 per person festival fee, making $15.00 plus tax. Pick-your-own in the front fields has no admission fee.
Every Saturday and Sunday for five weekends, from Saturday September 26 through Sunday October 25, 9:00am to 6:00pm.
No. The farm states hayrides are weekend-only during the festival, and the corn maze goes with them. Weekdays are playgrounds, animals and pick-your-own.
$0.90 per pound, charged on top of admission rather than included.
September 26 – October 25, 2026. Saturdays and Sundays for the Fall Harvest Festival (the farm, market and pick-your-own fields are open daily). Hours: 9:00am-6:00pm.
Admission starts at $6 per person. Family Playgrounds admission is $6.00 per person year round (age 2 and under free). On the five fall-festival weekends there is an additional $9.00 per person festival fee, for a total of $15.00 plus tax. Pick-your-own in the front fields carries no admission fee. Pumpkins are $0.90 per pound on top of admission.
1130 Tyler Street, Fredericksburg, VA 22401, in City of Fredericksburg. It is one of 5 patches we track in Northern Virginia.
We track 5 patches in Northern Virginia. At $6 a head this one sits below the regional median of $12, undercutting 3 of the 4 paid patches we track here.
Its season runs about 30 days against a regional average of 40, so it is a shorter window than most of its neighbours — miss it and the nearest alternatives will still be open.
braeheadfarm.com
Checked August 2026.