An apple orchard first and a pumpkin patch second, open daily from 8am with no published prices for any of its attractions - and the cow train and apple cannon that children come for run on weekends only.
The farm does not publish prices for the corn maze, cow train or apple cannon on its website; apples and pumpkins are paid by weight or by the piece.
Grandad’s is an orchard that has added a fall festival rather than a fall festival that has added trees, and reading it that way sets the right expectations. Apples are the product. The corn maze, cow train, apple cannon and playground sit alongside them, and the pumpkin patch arrives late in September when the apple season is already well underway.
The most useful thing about the operation is the 8am open, seven days a week. That is unusually early for the Hendersonville orchard cluster and it is the single lever a visitor can pull to make an October weekend work. Which brings us to the road.
The farm sits on Chimney Rock Road, east of Hendersonville, on the main tourist route toward Chimney Rock and Lake Lure. In October that corridor carries leaf-season traffic through a mountain gorge with limited passing, layered on top of everyone else driving out for apples. The bottleneck is not the orchard - it is getting to and from it. An 8am arrival on a Saturday costs you an early alarm and saves you an hour of sitting in a queue with restless children. This is the practical recommendation on this page and it is worth more than any advice about which apple variety to pick.
The schedule has a fault line in it that the farm does not flag loudly. The property is open 8am to 6pm daily. The corn maze runs 8am to 5pm daily. But the cow train and the apple cannon - the two attractions a four-year-old will remember - run 9am to 5pm on weekends only. A midweek visit therefore gets apples, pumpkins after late September, the maze, the playground and the bakery, and nothing mechanical. That is still a decent morning, but it is not the day pictured on the website, and it is the mistake most likely to be made here.
No prices. The farm’s deeper pages were not readable when this record was built, so we have no figure for the maze, the cow train or the apple cannon, and no per-pound rate for apples or pumpkins. We are not going to invent them. What we can say is the shape of the risk: an orchard with unpriced a la carte attractions and a bakery at the exit is a place where a family of four can spend $30 or $120 depending on how many times someone says yes. Ask for the price list at the counter when you arrive and decide then, rather than paying attraction by attraction as you go.
The other gap is the season. There is no published 2026 opening or closing date for the pumpkin patch beyond “late September”. If pumpkins rather than apples are the reason for the drive, the call to 828-685-1685 is not optional.
The bakery is a destination on its own - hot cider doughnuts served all day, plus apple pies, cookies, hot cider and cider slushies. Plenty of people drive out for that and buy a bag of pre-picked apples on the way past, which is a perfectly good version of the visit and the cheapest one available.
And leashed dogs are welcome across the farm, which narrows the field considerably in a county where most of the larger operations do not allow them. There is also a guest cottage on the property if you want to make the mountains a weekend rather than a morning.
The farm opens at 8am seven days a week, which is genuinely early for Henderson County, and the corn maze runs 8am to 5pm daily. The pumpkin patch does not open until late September, so a September visit before the last week gets you apples but no pumpkins. If the cow train and apple cannon matter, you need a weekend, when they run 9am to 5pm. The best single answer for most families is a weekend morning in early October, arriving close to 8am - it is the only way to get the full attraction list and beat the Chimney Rock Road traffic.
Two to three hours for picking, the maze and the bakery. Longer if you are eating and letting children run at the playground.
The farm sits on Chimney Rock Road, the main tourist route east from Hendersonville toward Chimney Rock and Lake Lure. In October that road carries leaf-season traffic on top of orchard traffic, and the queue on the highway is a bigger problem than the queue at the farm. Leaving early is not fussiness here, it is the difference between an hour of driving and two.
Not published. Working orchards in the Hendersonville area typically park visitors on grass or gravel, so assume soft ground after rain.
Nothing is published. Orchard rows are uneven ground by nature and a corn maze is not a firm surface. Call 828-685-1685 before travelling if that matters.
You are visiting midweek with young children who have been promised the cow train or the apple cannon. Both are weekend-only. Skip it too if you need a fixed budget before leaving home - the farm publishes no prices for the corn maze, cow train or apple cannon, and apples and pumpkins are sold by weight or by the piece.
The farm is on the Chimney Rock Road corridor, so it pairs naturally with Chimney Rock State Park or Lake Lure - but do the farm first thing in the morning and drive east afterwards, because the traffic builds in that direction as the day goes on. Downtown Hendersonville is a short drive the other way.
The farm does not publish prices for the corn maze, cow train or apple cannon on its website. Apples and pumpkins are paid for by weight or by the piece. There is no published general admission fee, so a market-and-bakery visit costs only what you buy.
The farm says the pumpkin patch starts in late September. It does not publish an exact 2026 opening or closing date, so if pumpkins are the reason for your trip, call 828-685-1685 first. Apples are picking well before that.
No. The farm is open daily 8am to 6pm and the corn maze runs 8am to 5pm daily, but the cow train and apple cannon operate weekends only, 9am to 5pm. This is the most common midweek disappointment here.
Yes, leashed dogs are welcome.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: Daily, Monday-Sunday. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission pricing was not published when we last checked. The farm does not publish prices for the corn maze, cow train or apple cannon on its website; apples and pumpkins are paid by weight or by the piece.
2951 Chimney Rock Road, Hendersonville, NC 28792, in Henderson County. It is one of 5 patches we track in Western North Carolina.
We track 5 patches in Western North Carolina, 1 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.
What sets it apart locally: it has a corn or crop maze, which most Western North Carolina patches on our list do not.
One caveat worth repeating: this farm had not published its 2026 dates when we last checked, while 1 of the 5 patches we track in Western North Carolina had. Treat any date you see elsewhere as last year's until the farm confirms it.
There are 3 other patches we track in Henderson County. All Western North Carolina patches →
Map pin is set to the town centre. Navigate to the street address above, not the pin.
grandadsapples.com
Checked August 2026.