A Norwegian-themed u-pick orchard south of Madison where parking, the farm store, the brat barn and the kids' play area all cost nothing — you pay only if you pick, and you must buy your bag before you enter the orchard.
No fee to park or to shop the farm store, brat barn or kids' play area. Pick-your-own is sold by the bag: you buy a bag first and pay by the bag. Per-bag prices are not published on the site. Cash, major credit cards via Square and WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program coupons are accepted.
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.
Eplegaarden is a Norwegian-themed u-pick orchard a short drive south of Madison, and its defining characteristic is what it does not charge for. There is no admission. There is no parking fee. The farm store, the brat barn and the kids’ play area are all free to walk into. You pay only if you pick fruit.
That is a rarer arrangement than it sounds. Most orchards of this profile have discovered they can charge $10 a head at the gate, or require every person entering the rows to buy their own bag. Here the money question is simple: are you picking, yes or no.
Picking is sold by the bag, and you buy the bag before you go into the orchard. That is a small procedural detail with a useful consequence — it fixes your spend at the front of the visit rather than at a scale on the way out. You decide how much fruit you are taking home while everyone is still calm, not after two children have filled a container beyond what you meant to buy.
The gap in our record is that the per-bag prices are not published on the farm’s own site. We are not going to guess at them. If the number matters to your budget, the answer is a phone call to 608-845-5966 before you leave the house. Payment is cash, major cards through Square, or WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program coupons — that last one is genuinely worth flagging, because it is not something most u-pick orchards accept and it is rarely advertised prominently.
Monday through Thursday, the farm is open 9am to 1pm. Four hours. Friday, Saturday and Sunday it runs 9am to 5pm.
If you work standard hours and were planning to pick apples on a Wednesday afternoon, you cannot. That is the single most consequential fact on this page, and it is easy to skim past because “open daily” is technically true.
The upside of the same schedule is that a weekday 9am arrival gets you an orchard with almost nobody in it. Dane County has a lot of people who want to pick apples on an October Saturday and comparatively few who can do it on a Tuesday morning. If your circumstances allow the latter, take it.
More than most u-pick orchards. There are hiking trails, tire swings, farm animals, and a kids’ play area, all of which are free to use. There is a brat barn — a properly Wisconsin detail — plus cider, cider donuts and caramel apples. The big red barn and a pavilion can be rented for private events.
Both apples and pumpkins are listed as pick-your-own here, which is worth noting because several of the better orchards near Madison do apples only. If you want the pumpkin and the apples in one stop without paying a festival gate price, this is a reasonable answer.
The farm’s own website does not print a 2026 opening or closing date. Our record has an August 31 start for regular hours, taken from a local article rather than the farm, with select dates operating in August before that. There is no published end date at all.
That matters most at the back end of the season. A Wisconsin orchard’s closing date is determined by the crop, and once the varieties are picked out the farm stops. If you are planning a late-October or November visit, check the farm’s own channels first rather than assuming it is still running.
Dogs are not allowed during regular business hours. The farm’s stated reason is that the courtyard gets crowded, which also tells you where the pinch point is on a busy Saturday — the central area, not the rows.
A 9am start in a Dane County orchard in October is cold, and the fruit is wet until the sun gets to it. Layers, and shoes you do not mind. And because the farm charges nothing at the gate, an unsuccessful visit costs you only the drive, which is a better bargain than most fall outings in this state offer.
Regular hours started August 31, 2026, with some select dates before that; the farm publishes no closing date, so treat the end of the season as open-ended and check before a late visit. The schedule is lopsided: Monday to Thursday is 9am to 1pm, a four-hour morning only, while Friday, Saturday and Sunday run 9am to 5pm. If you want an afternoon in the orchard it has to be Friday through Sunday. If you want the orchard nearly to yourself, a Monday or Tuesday at 9am is as quiet as u-pick near Madison gets.
Ninety minutes to two hours. Picking, a walk on the trails, a brat and a cider donut fills a morning without stretching it.
Open daily, but the weekday half-day makes the Friday-to-Sunday window carry most of the traffic. The farm's own reason for the no-dogs rule is that the courtyard gets crowded, which is a useful tell: the bottleneck here is the central area around the store and brat barn rather than the orchard rows.
Free, per the farm's own site, with no parking fee of any kind. Surface not specified in our record; assume the usual Dane County farm mix of gravel and grass, and soft ground after October rain.
Not published. The farm store, brat barn and courtyard are the parts most likely to work; the orchard rows, hiking trails and play area are uneven ground. Because there is no admission or parking charge, there is no financial risk in coming to assess it yourself, which is more than most orchards offer.
You are bringing a dog. Dogs are not allowed during regular business hours because the courtyard gets crowded, and the farm has only said it may add dog-friendly events later. Skip a Monday-to-Thursday afternoon entirely, because the farm shuts at 1pm on those days. And skip it if you need to know the cost in advance — per-bag picking prices are not published anywhere on the farm's site.
Fitchburg is just south of Madison, so Eplegaarden sits inside a cluster of Dane County fall options. Door Creek Orchard in Cottage Grove is the other quiet, low-key orchard in the county if apples are your priority; Schuster's Farm in Deerfield is the ticketed corn-maze-and-wagon-ride option if you need pumpkins and attractions on the same weekend. Treinen Farm up at Lodi is the drive worth making for a serious corn maze.
No. There is no fee to park or to use the farm store, brat barn or kids' play area. You pay only for pick-your-own fruit, which is sold by the bag.
Per-bag prices are not published on the farm's website, so we cannot give you a figure. The system is that you buy a bag first and then pay by the bag. Call 608-845-5966 for current pricing.
No. Dogs are not allowed during regular business hours because the courtyard gets crowded. The farm has indicated it may add dog-friendly events at some point, but there is nothing scheduled in our record.
Monday to Thursday 9am to 1pm, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday 9am to 5pm. The weekday half-day is the detail people miss.
Opens August 31, 2026 (closing date not published). Daily. Hours: Monday-Thursday 9:00am-1:00pm; Friday, Saturday and Sunday 9:00am-5:00pm.
Admission is free. No fee to park or to shop the farm store, brat barn or kids' play area. Pick-your-own is sold by the bag: you buy a bag first and pay by the bag. Per-bag prices are not published on the site. Cash, major credit cards via Square and WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program coupons are accepted.
2227 Fitchburg Road, Fitchburg, WI 53575, in Dane County. It is one of 4 patches we track in Madison Region.
We track 4 patches in Madison Region, 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.
What sets it apart locally: it has u-pick fields, a market, bakery or taproom, which most Madison Region patches on our list do not.
There are 3 other patches we track in Dane County. All Madison Region patches →
eplegaarden.com
Checked August 2026.