Six festival Saturdays and nothing else — the attractions run 11am to 5pm on Saturdays only, and the farm had still not published its 2026 admission price when we last checked.
Friske's own harvest festival page states 'FESTIVAL ADMISSION INFO - coming soon!' - 2026 admission pricing had not been published as of late August 2026, so no price is recorded. The farm market, bakery and cafe are free to enter.
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.
The whole of Friske’s fall attraction programme fits into six Saturdays. September 19, and then each Saturday through October 24, 11am to 5pm. Thirty-six hours of pony rides, petting zoo, face painting, pumpkin smashing, zipline, jumping pillow and giant apple slingshot for the entire season.
That is the first and most important thing to get right, because the market is a different business with different hours. It runs 9am to 8pm on market days, which means it is entirely possible to drive to Ellsworth on a Thursday, find the place open and busy, buy excellent cider and donuts, and discover that everything your children came for is packed away.
Friske’s own harvest festival page carried an explicit note in late August 2026: festival admission information coming soon. Not a price behind a booking flow, not a price in small type — no price published at all.
There is no way to do the usual arithmetic on that, and we are not going to invent a number. What we can say is that the market, bakery and cafe are free to walk into, so the risk is bounded to whatever the festival gate turns out to be. Check the farm’s page before you set off; six weeks after we looked, it is likely to have been filled in.
Three attractions were announced as new for 2026: a 150-foot double-lane mega slide, an adventure barn and apple tree climbers. A farm adding three physical attractions in a season is a farm investing in the family end of the market rather than coasting on cider sales, and the double-lane slide in particular is aimed squarely at children who want to race a sibling.
Those join a set that already skewed active — zipline, jumping pillow, giant apple slingshot — alongside the gentler pony rides, petting zoo and face painting for younger children. Pumpkin smashing is the one that tends to be a bigger hit than the description suggests.
The food is a genuine strength. Fresh-pressed cider comes hot, cold, as a slushie and sparkling, which is more variety than most Michigan mills bother with, and there is brick-oven pizza alongside the pumpkin spice donuts. That is a real lunch rather than a snack, which matters when the festival window is six hours and you do not want to leave and come back.
Ellsworth sits on US-31 roughly 10 miles south of Charlevoix and 40 miles north of Traverse City. That geography does two things. It makes the farm an easy addition to a drive between the two rather than a destination in its own right, and it puts it on the road that carries the region’s leaf-season traffic through the first half of October.
Combine that with a Saturdays-only, 11am-to-5pm schedule and the middle weekends of the season are the busiest hours on the busiest road. If you have flexibility, the September 19 opening Saturday and the October 24 closing one will be the quieter bookends.
Dress for the latitude. Antrim County in the second half of October is meaningfully colder than the same date in southern Michigan, and a festival that ends at 5pm is ending as the light and the temperature go. Layers, not a jacket, and something on the feet that copes with a field that has been rained on.
Harvest Festival activities run 11am to 5pm every Saturday from September 19 to October 24, 2026. That is six Saturdays and thirty-six operating hours for the entire festival, so the date you choose is the whole plan. The market itself keeps far longer hours, 9am to 8pm on market days, which means cider, donuts and pizza are available without the festival crowd on any other day. Early October is peak leaf season on this stretch of US-31, so the middle Saturdays carry the heaviest through-traffic as well as the heaviest farm traffic.
Three to four hours on a festival Saturday, which is most of the six-hour window. An hour if you are stopping at the market on a non-festival day.
Six Saturdays is a tight window for a Northern Michigan farm that also sits on the main north-south tourist road, and early-to-mid October adds leaf-season traffic to the same corridor. With a hard 11am start and a 5pm finish there is no early or late escape valve — everyone arrives inside the same six hours.
Not published. A US-31 farm market will have its own lot, but festival Saturdays are a different volume from market days; expect overflow onto grass and soft ground after rain.
You cannot come on a Saturday. There is no weekday or Sunday version of the festival, and the attractions simply are not running. Skip it too if you need a firm budget in advance, because the farm's own festival page still said admission information was coming soon in late August 2026.
Every Saturday from September 19 to October 24, 2026, 11am to 5pm. Six Saturdays in total. The attractions do not run on other days.
The farm had not published it. Its own harvest festival page said festival admission information was coming soon when we last checked in late August 2026, so there is no figure to report. The farm market, bakery and cafe are free to enter.
Three things were announced as new: a 150-foot double-lane mega slide, an adventure barn and apple tree climbers. They join the existing zipline, jumping pillow and giant apple slingshot.
On US-31 at Ellsworth, about 10 miles south of Charlevoix and 40 miles north of Traverse City. It works better as a stop on a Northern Michigan drive than as a destination on its own.
September 19 – October 24, 2026. Harvest Festival activities run every Saturday; the market itself is open longer hours on market days. Hours: Harvest Festival activities 11:00am-5:00pm every Saturday from September 19 to October 24, 2026; the market operates 9:00am-8:00pm on market days.
Admission is free. Friske's own harvest festival page states 'FESTIVAL ADMISSION INFO - coming soon!' - 2026 admission pricing had not been published as of late August 2026, so no price is recorded. The farm market, bakery and cafe are free to enter.
10743 US Highway 31, Ellsworth, MI 49729, in Antrim County. It is one of 3 patches we track in Northern Michigan.
We track 3 patches in Northern Michigan, 3 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 36 days against a regional average of 36, so it is broadly in line with the rest of the region.
What sets it apart locally: it has u-pick fields, farm animals, rides and play structures, which most Northern Michigan patches on our list do not.
Map pin is set to the town centre. Navigate to the street address above, not the pin.
friske.com
Checked August 2026.