The cheapest good farm day in Oakland County - free parking, a free corn maze, free playground and free hiking, with $3 hayrides and $10 pony rides as the only paid activities.
Parking, the corn maze, the playground and playscape, the wooden train structure, the hay maze, the haypile, the kiddie maze, pond access and orchard hiking are all free. Hayrides are $3 per person with under-3s free; pony rides are $10. Food trucks and pumpkin-patch pumpkins are extra.
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.
Diehl’s is the outlier on cost in this batch and it deserves to be judged on that. Almost everything here is free. The corn maze, the playground and playscape, the wooden train structure, the hay maze, the haypile, the kiddie maze, access to the pond and hiking through the orchard all cost nothing, and so does parking. Compare that with a gated fair charging $27.50 a head at weekends and the gap for a family of four is well over a hundred dollars for a comparable afternoon.
The paid extras are few and cheap: hayrides at $3 per person with under-3s free, and pony rides at $10. A family of four with a toddler pays $9 for a hayride. Two pony rides would cost more than double that, which is worth knowing before you join the queue with a child who has spotted the ponies.
So the honest arithmetic is this: the compulsory spend at Diehl’s is zero, and a realistic full afternoon - hayride for four, a pumpkin, cider and donuts - lands somewhere in the twenty-five to fifty dollar range, most of which is food.
August 15 to November 22, 2026. That is fourteen weeks, at a point when most Michigan farms operate three to six weekends. The mill opens weeks before its neighbours and closes after most of them.
Both ends have a catch, and both are worth reading carefully.
At the front: weekend attractions are reported to start on September 5, so a visit in the second half of August is a cider-and-donuts trip. The mill is running, the bakery is running, the free grounds are presumably there - but do not take children out in August expecting the full programme.
At the back: from November 1 the site switches to Saturdays and Sundays only, noon to 5:00pm. That is a five-hour day against the ten-hour days it runs through October, and by the third week of November in Michigan, 5:00pm is after dark. A November visit is a short afternoon, and the corn maze may well have been cut by then - frost ends mazes here, and no farm keeps standing corn indefinitely.
This is where Diehl’s is stronger than the price suggests. There are three separate mazes - a full corn maze, a hay maze and a kiddie maze - which is unusual, and it means a four-year-old and a nine-year-old can both have a maze appropriate to them. Add a playground and playscape, a wooden train structure, a haypile, a pond and open orchard hiking, and you have a site a child can spend three hours in without you having paid for anything.
There is a picnic area, which is the practical detail that turns this into a genuinely cheap day. Food trucks are on site as the paid option; bringing your own lunch and eating it at the picnic tables removes the largest remaining cost.
Dogs are allowed on the grounds. That is a modest advantage - several nearby orchards ban pets outright, so if the dog usually decides where you go, Diehl’s is on the shortlist alongside Yates in Rochester Hills.
One data conflict to be aware of: a Yelp listing for Diehl’s still carries a temporarily-closed flag that contradicts the farm’s own published 2026 season. The farm’s calendar is the better source, but if you are driving any distance and want certainty, 248-634-8981 settles it in a minute.
Finally, footwear. Every free attraction here is on soft or uneven ground - maze, haypile, orchard trails, pond edge. October is the wet month in southern Michigan, and the difference between an excellent free afternoon and a miserable one at Diehl’s is entirely about whether the children are in boots.
The season runs August 15 to November 22, 2026: daily 9:00am to 6:00pm through October 31, then Saturdays and Sundays only from November 1, noon to 5:00pm. Weekend attractions are reported to start September 5, so an August visit is a cider-and-donuts trip rather than a full farm day. Mid-September weekday mornings are the sweet spot - everything running, nobody there.
Two to three hours. With a corn maze, a hay maze, a kiddie maze, a playground, a wooden train structure, a haypile, a pond and orchard hiking all included for nothing, there is more free content here than most paid sites offer.
A free site in a popular fall region concentrates people at the food counter rather than at a gate. October weekends are the peak. The very long season - fourteen weeks - does spread demand better than the three or four weekends most Michigan farms operate.
Free, per the farm. Assume a farm lot on unpaved ground; northern Oakland County fields hold water after October rain.
Not published. The picnic area, cider mill and food-truck area are the flat part of the site. The corn maze, hay maze, haypile and orchard hiking are all uneven or soft ground by nature.
You want a big-ticket fair with rides and a gate wristband - Diehl's is deliberately the opposite. Skip an August trip if you have children expecting the full attraction list, since weekend attractions are reported to begin on September 5. And note the November hours are much shorter, at noon to 5:00pm weekends only.
Long Family Orchard in Commerce Township is the nearest comparable Oakland County mill, though it had no published 2026 opening date as of late August. Diehl's early August 15 start makes it the reliable option in the weeks before the rest of the county opens.
Yes. The corn maze, the playground and playscape, the wooden train structure, the hay maze, the haypile, the kiddie maze, pond access and orchard hiking are all free, and so is parking. Hayrides are $3 per person with under-3s free, and pony rides are $10. Food trucks and pumpkins are extra.
August 15 to November 22, 2026. Daily 9:00am to 6:00pm from August 15 to October 31, then Saturdays and Sundays only from November 1 to November 22, noon to 5:00pm. Weekend attractions are reported to begin September 5.
Yes, dogs are allowed on the grounds. That rules out very few metro Detroit orchards but it is worth knowing, since several nearby farms ban pets outright.
One Yelp listing still carries a temporarily-closed flag that contradicts the farm's own published 2026 calendar of August 15 to November 22. Go by the farm. If in doubt, call 248-634-8981.
August 15 – November 22, 2026. Daily August 15-October 31; Saturday and Sunday only November 1-22. Hours: 9:00am-6:00pm daily from August 15 to October 31; 12:00pm-5:00pm Saturday and Sunday from November 1 to November 22.
Admission is free. Parking, the corn maze, the playground and playscape, the wooden train structure, the hay maze, the haypile, the kiddie maze, pond access and orchard hiking are all free. Hayrides are $3 per person with under-3s free; pony rides are $10. Food trucks and pumpkin-patch pumpkins are extra.
1479 Ranch Road, Holly, MI 48442, 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 $3 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.
Its season runs about 100 days against a regional average of 84, so it is a notably longer window than most of its neighbours, which takes the pressure off picking a weekend.
What sets it apart locally: it has rides and play structures, which most Metro Detroit patches on our list do not.
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.
diehlsorchard.com
Checked August 2026.