The longest harvest season and one of the cheapest gates in Indiana at $5 a head - but it runs on Central Time while most of the state does not, and the campus is big enough that the $30-an-hour golf cart is a real temptation rather than a novelty.
Orchard admission is $5 per person with ages 2 and under free. Apple cannon bags are $5 for 5 shots or $10 for 10-13 shots, and golf cart rentals are $30 per hour for a four-seater or $35 per hour for a six-seater. The dairy and pig adventure tours on the same campus are ticketed separately.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $20.00 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.
Two facts define a visit here, and neither is on the attraction list.
The first is the clock. Fair Oaks sits in Jasper County, in the northwestern corner of Indiana that runs on Central Time while the bulk of the state runs on Eastern. Everything the farm publishes is Central. If you are coming from Indianapolis you gain an hour; if you are coming back you lose it. The practical failure mode is a visitor who reads “open until 5pm”, drives from the east, and arrives to a closed orchard because their 4:45pm was the farm’s 3:45pm - or, more commonly, someone who wastes an hour of a good day because they did not realise they had it.
The second is scale. This is not a farm with a pumpkin patch; it is an agritourism campus with an orchard, a pumpkin patch, Mooville, an Orchard Game Zone, museums, farm tours, and separately ticketed dairy and pig adventures. The $5 orchard admission is a door into one part of it.
Five dollars a person, under-2s free. Four people get in for twenty dollars. Nothing else in this directory comes close, and it changes the risk calculation entirely - if the weather turns or a toddler melts down forty minutes in, you have lost twenty dollars rather than ninety.
The counterweight is the golf cart. Four-seaters rent at $30 an hour, six-seaters at $35. Rent a six-seater for two hours and you have spent $70 on transport against $20 on admission. That is not a rip-off - the campus is genuinely spread out and the rental exists for a reason - but it is the line item most likely to quadruple your day’s cost, and it is entirely optional if everyone in your group can walk.
The apple cannon is the other charge: $5 for five shots, $10 for ten to thirteen. Two children with a ten-shot bag each is $20, which is the gate price again.
So the honest arithmetic for a family of four: $20 to get in, realistically $40 to $60 with a cannon bag and something to eat, and up to $130 if you rent a cart for the afternoon. The dairy and pig tours sit on top of all of that and the farm has not published their prices where we could read them - price those separately before you commit.
August 22 to November 7. Nearly eleven weeks. The apple orchard opens August 29.
Almost every other Indiana farm in this directory runs a six-weekend season concentrated in October, which means concentrated crowds and no flexibility. Fair Oaks gives you September weekdays, early-November weekends, and everything in between. If you have ever been put off a pumpkin trip because the only available date was the third Saturday in October along with everyone else in the region, this is the answer to that problem.
The catch is that a long season is not a uniform one. Pumpkins in late August are not what you are coming for; the apple picking is the early-season draw and the pumpkins come into their own from late September. And a November 7 close means the last fortnight is genuinely cold weather in northern Indiana, with the wagon rides running in conditions that make layers non-negotiable.
The wagon tractor rides out to the orchard run Saturdays and Sundays only. On weekdays you walk. On a campus this size that is a real difference, particularly with small children or anyone carrying a bag of apples back.
Live music is also a Saturday thing. So the weekday trade-off is clear: fewer people, cheaper feel, less transport, less atmosphere. Weekdays are the right choice if your priority is the orchard itself and a quiet visit; weekends are right if you want the event.
October 10 and 11, noon to 4pm Central. Four hours, two days. It carries the official Indiana Pumpkin Growers Association weigh-off, which is where the enormous competition pumpkins arrive, and that is a legitimately distinctive thing to see - state-level giant-pumpkin weigh-offs are not common and this is the sanctioned one.
But it is a four-hour window on one weekend. If Pumpkinfest is the reason you are going, put those exact hours in the calendar in Central Time and build the drive around them. If you turn up on October 17 expecting giant pumpkins, they will be gone.
The 2026 harvest season runs August 22 to November 7, with the apple orchard opening August 29 - by far the longest window of any farm in this directory. Hours are Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday 10am to 5pm, all Central Time. Saturdays and Sundays are the only days the wagon tractor rides run out to the orchard; on weekdays you walk. Pumpkinfest is a single weekend, October 10-11, from noon to 4pm Central, and includes the official Indiana Pumpkin Growers Association giant-pumpkin weigh-off.
Half a day minimum if you are only doing the orchard and Mooville. A full day if you add either of the ticketed adventure tours, which are separate attractions on the same campus rather than extras within one.
A season running from late August to early November spreads demand far more evenly than the six-weekend farms elsewhere in Indiana, which is a real advantage. The exceptions are Pumpkinfest weekend, October 10-11, and the Saturdays in mid-October when the wagon rides, the live music and the peak leaf traffic all coincide.
Not published. The campus is large and set up for coach and visitor volume given the museum and tour operations, so it is better provisioned than a small farm - but the surface is undocumented.
Not documented in what we read, but the golf cart rentals at $30 an hour for a four-seater and $35 for a six-seater exist precisely because the site is spread out. If walking distance is a limiting factor, that rental is worth pricing into the day rather than treating as a luxury. Ask on 219-394-2025 about what the wagon tractor rides require.
You want a compact farm you can walk end to end without thinking about it. This is an agritourism campus with multiple separately ticketed attractions, and treating it as a simple pumpkin patch will lead to either overspending or missing the thing you came for. Skip Pumpkinfest specifically if you cannot make a four-hour midday window on one particular weekend.
The dairy and pig adventure tours are on the same campus and are the obvious pairing, provided you accept they are separate tickets. Fair Oaks sits directly off I-65 between Chicago and Indianapolis, which makes it an unusually easy stop to build into a longer drive.
Central. Most of Indiana runs on Eastern, so a visitor driving from Indianapolis, Lafayette or South Bend gains an hour crossing into Jasper County. Every posted time - the 9am opening, the 5pm close, the noon to 4pm Pumpkinfest window - is Central Time.
Orchard admission is $5 per person with ages 2 and under free. The dairy adventure and pig adventure tours on the same campus are ticketed separately and are not covered by that $5.
October 10 and 11, 2026, from noon to 4pm Central Time. It includes the official Indiana Pumpkin Growers Association weigh-off, which is where the giant pumpkins turn up.
No. Wagon tractor rides out to the orchard run on Saturdays and Sundays only. On weekdays you walk to the orchard, which on a campus this size is a meaningful difference.
August 22 – November 7, 2026. Daily. Hours: Monday-Saturday 9am-5pm Central Time; Sunday 10am-5pm Central Time.
Admission starts at $5 per person. Orchard admission is $5 per person with ages 2 and under free. Apple cannon bags are $5 for 5 shots or $10 for 10-13 shots, and golf cart rentals are $30 per hour for a four-seater or $35 per hour for a six-seater. The dairy and pig adventure tours on the same campus are ticketed separately.
856 N 600 E, Fair Oaks, IN 47943, in Jasper County. It is one of 3 patches we track in Northwest Indiana.
We track 3 patches in Northwest Indiana. At $5 a head this one sits right on the regional median of $5, undercutting 1 of the 3 paid patches we track here.
Its season runs about 78 days against a regional average of 57, 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 hayrides, which most Northwest Indiana patches on our list do not.
There is 1 other patch we track in Jasper County. All Northwest Indiana patches →
fofarms.com
Checked August 2026.