The entire play area is free and the only charge is a $15-per-person wagon ride that hands back a large pumpkin, a mini, a gourd and an ear of corn — which makes this the best-value fall stop near Appleton if you were buying pumpkins anyway, and a completely free one if you were not.
Entrance and the play area are free. The pumpkin-picking wagon ride is $15 per person with 2 and under free, and that fee includes one large pumpkin, one mini pumpkin, one gourd and one piece of corn per person.
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.
Most farms charge you to get in and then sell you a pumpkin. Cuff Farms has inverted that. The gate is free, the play area is free, and the single charge on the property is the wagon ride out to the pumpkin field. That is a genuinely different economic model, and it rewards two very different kinds of visitor.
If you have young children and an hour to fill, this is a free afternoon. The bale maze, the corn maze, the corn pool, the Rock N Rollers, the pedal carts and the slides all cost nothing. You could arrive at 10:00am on a Saturday, let three children exhaust themselves, buy a donut, and drive home having spent five dollars. Very few farms in Wisconsin allow that, and none this close to Appleton.
The wagon ride is $15 per person, children 2 and under free, and it includes one large pumpkin, one mini pumpkin, one gourd and one piece of corn for each ticket. For a family of four that is $60, returning four large pumpkins, four minis, four gourds and four ears of corn.
Price that against a grocery store. A large carving pumpkin plus a mini plus a gourd is not far off ten dollars in most Wisconsin supermarkets in October, so a family that genuinely wants a pumpkin each is paying something in the region of five dollars a head for the ride and the field. That is fair.
Now price it against what most families actually need. Many households want one carving pumpkin for the porch and maybe a couple of small things for the table. In that scenario you are paying $60 for a ride and three pumpkins you did not want, and the honest advice is to take the free play area, skip the ride, and buy a pumpkin from the farm store on the way out. The farm sells them there.
That is the piece of arithmetic worth doing in the car park rather than in the queue.
September 25 to October 25 is fifteen operating days. There is no room to postpone a rained-off Saturday by a fortnight. If a specific weekend matters — a birthday, visiting relatives — treat it as fixed rather than flexible, and have a wet-weather plan, because a bale maze and a corn pool in the rain is a short visit.
Friday is the interesting day. It does not open until 1:00pm, which rules out a morning, but it runs until 7:00pm and it is the only day with wood-fired pizza at the Food Shed. Every other day the food is donuts, cider, hot dogs, nachos and ice cream. Friday is also the day the school-run crowd is not there for most of the afternoon, so if you can take a half day, the 1:00pm to 3:00pm window is likely the quietest part of the whole season.
Be honest about the light, though. A 7:00pm close on the final Friday in October is well after sunset in Wisconsin, and a corn pool and a pedal cart track are not much fun in the cold and dark. Late-season Friday visits should be built around the pizza and an early start, not the last hour.
Look at the attraction list and the age it points at is roughly 2 to 10. A corn pool, a bale maze, slides and pedal carts are excellent for a five-year-old and thin for a twelve-year-old. There is no haunted attraction, no zip line, no cannon and no ropes course here. That is not a criticism — it keeps the place free — but a family with teenagers will do the whole property in forty minutes and wonder what the plan is.
The corn maze is listed without an acreage, so we cannot tell you how long it takes. Given that it sits inside a free play area rather than being the ticketed centrepiece, assume it is a manageable walk rather than an hour-long puzzle, and ask at the Food Shed if that matters to you.
The farm does not publish anything about parking surface or accessibility, and both are worth a call or text to 920-779-4788 if either affects you. Nor does it say whether the wagon ride runs continuously or on a schedule, which on a busy Saturday is the difference between walking straight on and waiting half an hour. It also does not confirm whether pumpkins in the field are pre-picked or genuinely on the vine. Ask when you arrive.
The 2026 season is September 25 through October 25, Fridays 1:00pm to 7:00pm and Saturdays and Sundays 10:00am to 6:00pm. That is five weekends and fifteen operating days, so there is very little slack in the calendar. Friday afternoon is the outlier worth targeting: it opens at 1:00pm, runs to 7:00pm, and is the only day with wood-fired pizza. Early October Saturdays at 10:00am are the classic choice and the busiest. Late October Fridays are the quietest and the coldest — a 7:00pm close in the last week of October is well after dark.
Two hours is right for most families. The free play area — bale maze, corn maze, corn pool, Rock N Rollers, pedal carts and slides — will hold young children for ninety minutes on its own, and the pumpkin wagon ride adds to that. If you are only there for pumpkins, an hour.
Fifteen operating days in a five-weekend season, at the closest farm of its kind to a metro of that size, is a recipe for busy Saturdays. Friday afternoons are structurally quieter — most people are still at work until the last couple of hours — and the 1:00pm opening means the early part of Friday is the emptiest the farm gets. The free entrance also means there is nothing stopping a casual local dropping in for twenty minutes, so foot traffic is probably higher than the operating days alone suggest.
Not published. This is a working farm on a rural road in Outagamie County, so expect a grass or gravel field lot rather than pavement, and expect it to be soft after October rain. Wisconsin Octobers are wet and mud is the defining hazard at farms like this.
Not published. A wagon ride out to a pumpkin field, a bale maze and a corn pool all involve uneven ground and climbing, and none of it is described as accessible. Call or text 920-779-4788 before travelling if wheeled access matters.
You need a weekday visit — this is Friday through Sunday only, and Friday does not open until 1:00pm. Skip it if you want a large ticketed attraction park with a zip line, a haunted maze or a cannon; Cuff Farms is a free play area plus a pumpkin ride, and that is the whole proposition. Skip the wagon ride specifically if you do not want pumpkins, because the ride is where the pumpkins come from and the play area is free without it.
Hortonville is about 15 miles west of Appleton, which makes this the natural fall stop for the Fox Cities and an easy detour off a Highway 10 or Highway 15 drive. It pairs better with a town lunch in Appleton than with another farm — the season is short enough that most nearby farms are competing for the same five weekends, and October weekend traffic on the scenic routes through this part of Wisconsin is heavier than usual.
Entrance and the play area are free — that includes the corn maze, bale maze, corn pool, Rock N Rollers, pedal carts and slides. The only charge is the pumpkin-picking wagon ride at $15 per person, with 2 and under free.
One large pumpkin, one mini pumpkin, one gourd and one piece of corn per person, plus the ride out to the patch. It is a bundle, not just a ride ticket.
September 25 to October 25, 2026. Fridays 1:00pm to 7:00pm, Saturdays and Sundays 10:00am to 6:00pm. It is closed Monday through Thursday.
Yes. The Food Shed sells donuts, cider, hot dogs, nachos and ice cream, and wood-fired pizza is a Friday-only item. There is also a farm store with mums, pumpkins and Wisconsin products.
September 25 – October 25, 2026. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Hours: Friday 1:00pm-7:00pm; Saturday and Sunday 10:00am-6:00pm.
Admission is free. Entrance and the play area are free. The pumpkin-picking wagon ride is $15 per person with 2 and under free, and that fee includes one large pumpkin, one mini pumpkin, one gourd and one piece of corn per person.
N2299 Ledge Hill Road, Hortonville, WI 54944, in Outagamie County. It is one of 3 patches we track in Fox Valley.
We track 3 patches in Fox Valley, 2 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.
Its season runs about 31 days against a regional average of 31, so it is broadly in line with the rest of the region.
Map pin is set to the town centre. Navigate to the street address above, not the pin.
cuffarms.com · gmail.com
Checked August 2026.