The biggest fall operation in the St Louis metro east, split cleanly into a free walk-in half you can eat and shop in and a ticketed half you cannot enter without buying access through their system at prices they do not publish.
Tickets are required for field access and are sold through Eckert's own ticketing system; no prices are printed on the farm's public pages. Season passes (the Eckert Experience Pass and a Family Four Pack Experience Pass) include free field access at both the Belleville and Grafton farms whenever crops are in season, and some tiers include one special farm experience.
Eckert’s works differently from almost every other farm in this directory, and the difference is worth understanding before you drive out. The property splits in two. On one side sits a full hospitality and retail operation: a Country Restaurant open 8am to 8pm daily, a Country Store and Garden Center open 9am to 7pm daily, Mr. E’s Donut and Custard Shop running 11am to 8pm Tuesday to Friday and 10am to 8pm at weekends, and a Cider Shed open to 9pm midweek and 10pm on Friday and Saturday. All of that is walk-in. No ticket, no gate.
On the other side sit the fields, and you cannot step into them without buying access through Eckert’s own ticketing system.
Nowhere on the public pages is there a figure for field access. Not a per-person rate, not a family rate, nothing. You find out inside the booking flow. For a farm this size in a metro area this size, that is a real planning obstacle, and it is the single most useful thing to sort out before leaving home rather than at the counter.
What we can say honestly is what the structure implies. A family can arrive, eat lunch, buy doughnuts and custard, walk the store and garden center, and take home pre-picked pumpkins, having paid for nothing but goods. That is a complete and pleasant fall afternoon at zero admission cost. The ticket buys you the act of picking: the wagon ride out to the pumpkin fields, the rows themselves, the apple trees, the sunflower and orchard loop trails.
Whether that is worth paying for is a genuine question rather than a rhetorical one. For a four-year-old, choosing a pumpkin off the vine is the whole memory. For adults who mainly want lunch and a nice bag of apples, it demonstrably is not.
Eckert’s sells an Eckert Experience Pass and a Family Four Pack Experience Pass, both of which include free field access at Belleville and at the Grafton farm whenever crops are in season, with some tiers including one special farm experience. Because Eckert’s crops run well beyond pumpkins into apples, peaches and a spring tulip trail, a pass is a year-round product rather than an autumn one.
The arithmetic is straightforward even without published numbers. If you intend to visit the fields once, buy a ticket. If you intend to come back for apples in October, peaches next summer or the tulip trail in spring 2027, price the pass. Note that the tulip trail is not running again until spring 2027, so it does not help a pass bought for this autumn alone.
Jack’s Lighted Trail starts September 11, a Friday, and runs as an evening attraction. The sunflower trail opened on August 1. Pumpkin picking is described only as reopening mid September 2026, with no exact date and no closing date published anywhere.
That is the gap to close with a phone call. Mid September is a fortnight-wide target, and driving to a farm for pumpkins that have not opened yet is the most avoidable mistake on offer here.
Eckert’s operates a separate farm at Grafton, up on the Illinois side of the river, and events do not always run at both. Directions, event listings and social media posts all conflate them if you are not paying attention. Confirm the event you want is at Belleville, on Green Mount Road, before you set the satnav.
The Cider Shed keeps the latest hours of anything on the site, to 10pm on Friday and Saturday, which makes an evening visit viable in a way it rarely is at farms. Late September and October evenings in the metro east cool off sharply once the sun drops, and Jack’s Lighted Trail is by definition an after-dark walk, so bring more than a light jacket for that one.
Eckert's has not published exact 2026 pumpkin dates. What it does say is that pumpkin picking reopens in mid September 2026 and that Jack's Lighted Trail starts on September 11, with the sunflower trail already open from August 1. The safest window for pumpkins is therefore late September into October. Department hours are long and daily, so a weekday morning is easy to arrange: the Country Store and Garden Center open at 9am and the Country Restaurant at 8am.
Two to three hours for the walk-in side alone, given a restaurant, bakery, deli, donut and custard shop, cider shed, store and garden center. Add another hour or two if you buy field access and take the wagon out to the pumpkins.
October weekends in a metro area the size of St Louis are the crunch, and the restaurant and donut shop absorb a lot of that pressure independently of the fields. The long daily hours across every department are the release valve: a Tuesday morning here is a genuinely different place from a Saturday afternoon.
Not published in the record. A farm running a restaurant, store, garden center and ticketed fields on one site will have substantial parking, but the surface is not described and field areas after rain are the usual soft spot.
Not published. The walk-in departments are conventional retail and hospitality spaces and are likely to be the easier part; the sunflower trail, orchard loop and pumpkin fields are field ground reached by wagon. Ask before booking if this matters.
You need to know what field access costs before you commit. Ticket prices are not printed anywhere on the public pages and are only visible inside their ticketing system, which makes advance budgeting awkward. Skip it too if you assumed one price covers the day, because the walk-in departments and the fields are separate transactions.
Green Mount Road is on the Belleville side of the metro east, which puts St Louis within an easy drive, so this works as a half-day inside a wider trip rather than an isolated rural expedition. Eckert's own Grafton farm sits up on the river bluffs north-west of here if you want to build a two-farm day, though check what is running at each before committing.
No prices are printed on the farm's public pages. Tickets are required for field access and are sold through Eckert's own ticketing system, so you have to start a booking to see figures. The restaurant, store, garden center, donut shop and cider shed are walk-in and require no ticket.
The farm states only that pumpkin picking reopens mid September 2026 and gives no exact date. Jack's Lighted Trail is confirmed from September 11 and the sunflower trail opened August 1. Confirm the pumpkin date before travelling.
Yes. The Country Restaurant, Country Store, Garden Center, Mr. E's Donut and Custard Shop and the Cider Shed all keep long daily hours and are open to walk-ins. Only stepping into the fields to pick requires a ticket.
No. Eckert's runs a separate farm at Grafton, and events are not always at both. Check which location an event belongs to before you set off, and note that the season passes cover field access at both.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: Daily. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission pricing was not published when we last checked. Tickets are required for field access and are sold through Eckert's own ticketing system; no prices are printed on the farm's public pages. Season passes (the Eckert Experience Pass and a Family Four Pack Experience Pass) include free field access at both the Belleville and Grafton farms whenever crops are in season, and some tiers include one special farm experience.
951 S Green Mount Rd, Belleville, IL 62220, in St. Clair County. It is one of 4 patches we track in Southern Illinois.
We track 4 patches in Southern Illinois, 2 of which are free to walk into. The farm has not published a gate price, so it cannot be compared on cost — call before you budget.
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 Southern Illinois 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.
eckerts.com
Checked August 2026.