Free to walk in and cheap to play, but the $10 wristband only sells noon to 5pm on weekends and excludes the two things families most want — the horse-drawn wagon and the u-pick itself.
Individual activities are $3 each - apple cannon, corn maze, pumpkin chunkin and the train wagon ride. An unlimited same-day wristband covering all four is $10, sold noon-5pm Saturdays and Sundays. Apple picking is $15 per half-bushel tote bag, horse-drawn wagon rides are $6 per person and fish-pond feeding is $1. The farm states horse-drawn wagon rides and apple and pumpkin picking are NOT included in the wristband.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $12.00 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.
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.
Country Mill is one of the better-value farms in mid-Michigan for a simple reason: nothing forces you to spend. Walking in costs nothing, the market and bakery are open from 9am, and the paid attractions are individually priced at $3 rather than bundled behind a gate. A parent with one determined child and no appetite for a full afternoon can genuinely visit for three dollars.
Four activities carry the $3 price: the apple cannon, the corn maze, pumpkin chunkin and the train wagon ride. Bought singly that is $12 a person. The unlimited same-day wristband is $10, so it wins from the outset and keeps winning every time someone wants another go at the cannon. For a family of four that is $40 against $48, and realistically much more than $48 once repeats are counted.
What matters more is what the wristband does not buy. The farm is explicit that horse-drawn wagon rides, at $6 a head, and apple and pumpkin picking are outside it. Those are precisely the two things a lot of families assume they are paying for. A family of four doing the wristband, one round of horse-drawn rides and a single half-bushel apple tote is at about $79 before a donut is bought.
The wristband sells from noon to 5pm. Horse-drawn rides run 1pm to 5pm. The farm itself opens at 9am. That five-hour gap between opening and the start of the paid activities is the single most important scheduling fact here, and it cuts both ways. If you want a quiet orchard and a bakery run without crowds, 9am is excellent. If you have promised a child a corn maze, arriving at 9am means three hours of waiting.
The unresolved question is which days any of this applies to. The farm’s stated open days are Wednesday through Saturday, while both the wristband and the wagon-ride schedules refer to Saturdays and Sundays. Nothing on the farm’s own pages reconciles the two. That is not a small discrepancy when Sunday is the day most families are free, so it is worth a call or a text — the farm takes both on 517-543-1019 — rather than a guess.
This is a full orchard operation, not a pumpkin lot with attractions bolted on. U-pick runs across apples, blueberries, peaches, sunflowers and pumpkins depending on the point in the year, and the apple pricing is by the container: $15 for a half-bushel tote. That model rewards filling the bag properly, and it penalises anyone who only wants six apples, so decide which you are before you take a tote.
The bakery does fresh donuts, caramel apples and pies, and there is a winery and hard cider on site. In Michigan that combination is the whole point of a fall farm visit for a good number of adults, and it means this works as a stop for a group where not everyone wants to climb a straw bale. Fish-pond feeding is a dollar and buys more small-child attention than its price suggests.
The farm had not published dated 2026 season information when we last checked. Its pricing page shows a September-to-October activity window without a year, and the printed start date falls on a weekday that does not match 2026, which suggests it is carried over. We have not treated it as this year’s schedule.
The practical consequence: if you are planning for late October, confirm the maze is still standing. Michigan farms cut mazes down after the crop is done and the first hard frosts, and the patch often outlives the maze by a week or two. Ask specifically about the maze rather than about the farm being open.
The farm has not published 2026 fall opening and closing dates, so treat the season as unconfirmed. Within a given day, the clock matters more than the calendar here: the market and bakery open at 9am, but the activity wristband is only sold from noon to 5pm and the horse-drawn wagon rides only run 1pm to 5pm. An early arrival gets you donuts, cider and a quiet apple row; it does not get you the corn maze wristband. If the rides are the point, aim for noon.
Two to three hours covers the four wristband activities and a bakery stop. Add an hour if you are picking apples, since the half-bushel tote takes a while to fill properly.
The wristband window is five hours long and weekend-only, which concentrates the ride traffic into Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The market side, open from 9am, absorbs the early arrivals instead. The record does not describe queue lengths, so treat that as unmeasured.
Not published. Michigan farm lots at this scale are usually grass or gravel field parking, and October rain turns those soft — expect to walk in on uneven ground rather than pavement.
You can only visit on a weekday. The farm lists its open days as Wednesday to Saturday, but the wristband and the horse-drawn wagon rides are both advertised for Saturdays and Sundays only — so a Wednesday or Thursday trip gets the market and u-pick without the paid activities. Skip it too if you were expecting the wristband to cover the wagon ride or the pumpkin picking; it does not.
Entry is free. Four unlimited wristbands are $40 for the day, versus $48 if you bought all four activities individually for each person. Add a $15 half-bushel apple tote and four horse-drawn wagon rides at $6 each and you are at roughly $79 before food.
No. The farm states plainly that horse-drawn wagon rides and apple and pumpkin picking are not included. The wristband covers the apple cannon, corn maze, pumpkin chunkin and train wagon ride only.
This is genuinely unclear on the farm's own pages. It lists open days as Wednesday to Saturday, yet advertises the wristband and horse-drawn rides for Saturdays and Sundays. Call or text 517-543-1019 before planning a Sunday trip.
The farm had not published dated 2026 season information when we last checked. Its pricing page carries a September-to-October window with no year attached, which may be carried over from a previous season, so we have not treated it as confirmed.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: Wednesday to Saturday. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission is free. Individual activities are $3 each - apple cannon, corn maze, pumpkin chunkin and the train wagon ride. An unlimited same-day wristband covering all four is $10, sold noon-5pm Saturdays and Sundays. Apple picking is $15 per half-bushel tote bag, horse-drawn wagon rides are $6 per person and fish-pond feeding is $1. The farm states horse-drawn wagon rides and apple and pumpkin picking are NOT included in the wristband.
4648 Otto Road, Charlotte, MI 48813, in Eaton County. It is one of 4 patches we track in Mid-Michigan.
We track 4 patches in Mid-Michigan, 4 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.
What sets it apart locally: it has rides and play structures, which most Mid-Michigan patches on our list do not.
One caveat worth repeating: this farm had not published its 2026 dates when we last checked, while 0 of the 4 patches we track in Mid-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.
countrymillfarms.com
Checked August 2026.