A genuinely cheap Charlotte patch where the real decision is weekday versus weekend: weekdays are free and quiet but with most of the extras shut, weekends cost about $25 for a family of four and are the only time the hayride, shop and food are running.
No entry fee. Parking is $5 per car on weekends only; weekday parking is free. Hayrides are $5 per person and children 2 and under ride free. Pumpkins and treats are priced separately.
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.
Most pumpkin patches within reach of a big city have worked out that they can charge for the gate. Hodges has not, and that single fact is what makes it worth knowing about. You can drive out on a Tuesday morning in October, walk into the field, pay for one pumpkin and leave, and the day costs you the pumpkin.
That is a real thing for parents of very small children. The economics of a $22-a-head fun park assume you will stay three hours; a two-year-old does not sign up to that assumption. Free entry means you can leave after twenty minutes without the day feeling like a write-off.
The catch is that the farm runs at two different intensities. On weekends the hayride operates, the farm shop is open and the food is going - kettle corn, cider doughnuts. On weekdays, by the farm’s own description, the hayride is a weekend activity. You are getting the field, the hay bales and the barnyard animals.
So the honest way to plan this is to decide which visit you actually want. A weekday morning is free, empty and thin on activity. A Saturday costs a family of four $5 to park plus $20 for four hayride seats, and delivers the full version of the place for roughly the price of two coffees.
Twenty-five dollars is a low number by Charlotte standards, and it is worth saying plainly that this is one of the cheapest ways to get a genuine farm afternoon in Mecklenburg County. But it is a floor, not a ceiling. Pumpkins are priced separately, the food is separate, and nobody walks past a cider doughnut stand with two children and does not stop.
The season is five weeks, September 26 to October 31. That is short even by the standards of the region, and it means the last two weekends before Halloween carry more demand than the rest of the run combined. If your visit is flexible, the first week of October is the sweet spot: pumpkins are in, the crowd has not built, and you are past the worst of the September heat.
Late September and early October are also when tropical systems still reach the Carolina Piedmont. Farm field parking holds water for days afterwards, and a patch with no gate fee has no incentive to gravel a lot. Check the forecast for the previous week, not just the day.
At the other end, October 31 is the hard stop, and it is a Saturday in 2026. Expect that day to be the busiest of the year here.
Three things are worth internalising before you get in the car. The gate shuts at 5:30pm even though the farm is open until 6pm - a half-hour trap for anyone planning a post-work visit in the short October evenings. Dogs are not allowed, service animals excepted, which is a genuine disappointment for people who assume an open farm field is dog country. And alcohol is prohibited on the property, so this is not a place to bring a hard cider and sit by the picnic tables.
Groups are the last one. Fifteen or more people is a field trip, and the farm wants that booked in advance through its online form rather than turning up as a large party. If you are organising a birthday or a church group, that is a phone call in September, not a decision on the Saturday morning.
The farm does not publish pumpkin prices, food prices or anything about accessibility, and we have not confirmed the 2026 dates directly with the owners. If any of those matter to your day - a wheelchair user, a tight pumpkin budget, a long drive - the number on the listing is worth using before you go. It is a short call and it removes every unknown on this page.
The patch runs September 26 through October 31, 2026, open daily 9am to 6pm. The single most important number is the 5:30pm gate close: the farm advertises a 6pm closing time but stops letting cars in half an hour earlier, so an after-work arrival needs to be before 5:30pm or it is a wasted drive. If you want the hayride, shop, kettle corn and cider doughnuts, you need a weekend. If you want an empty field and a $0 bill, come on a weekday morning.
An hour to ninety minutes on a weekday, when it is pumpkins, hay bales and animals. Two hours on a weekend once you add the hayride, a queue for it, and food.
This is inside Charlotte on the east side, it is free, and the season is five weeks. That combination makes October Saturdays and Sundays busy, and the weekend is also the only time the hayride runs, so demand concentrates on the one thing with a queue. Weekdays are the release valve and the farm is open every one of them.
Free on weekdays, $5 per car on weekends. The record does not describe the surface, but this is a working Mecklenburg County farm, so plan for a field or grass lot rather than asphalt, and expect it to be soft for a few days after any late-September or October storm.
Not addressed in anything the farm publishes. Hay bale climbing and a pumpkin field are uneven ground by nature, and a hay wagon involves a step up. If you are bringing a wheelchair or a stroller you need heavier wheels than usual, call 980-867-1014 before driving out.
You are looking for a corn maze, rides or an all-day attraction. The listed activities are a pumpkin patch, hay bale climbing, barnyard animals, a weekend hayride, picnic areas and a farm shop, and that is the whole of it. Skip it too if you are bringing a dog: pets are not permitted apart from service animals.
It sits on the east side of Charlotte rather than out in the county, so pair it with whatever you would normally do in the city that day. If you want a second, bigger fall stop the same weekend, the ticketed operations north of town in Huntersville and Mooresville are half an hour up I-77.
There is no entry fee at all. On weekends you pay $5 per car to park and $5 per person for the hayride; on weekdays parking is free. Pumpkins and food are priced separately and the farm does not publish those figures.
It is open 9am to 6pm daily, but the entrance gate closes at 5:30pm. Arriving at 5:45pm means you will not get in.
No. The record lists hayrides as a weekend activity, and the farm shop and food operate on weekends too. A weekday visit is the pumpkin field, the hay bales and the animals.
No. Pets are not permitted other than service animals, and alcohol is prohibited on the property.
September 26 – October 31, 2026. Daily. Hours: 9:00am-6:00pm daily; the entrance gate closes at 5:30pm.
Admission is free. No entry fee. Parking is $5 per car on weekends only; weekday parking is free. Hayrides are $5 per person and children 2 and under ride free. Pumpkins and treats are priced separately.
3780 Rocky River Road East, Charlotte, NC 28215, in Mecklenburg County. It is one of 5 patches we track in Charlotte Region.
We track 5 patches in Charlotte 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.
Its season runs about 36 days against a regional average of 54, so it is a shorter window than most of its neighbours — miss it and the nearest alternatives will still be open.
There is 1 other patch we track in Mecklenburg County. All Charlotte Region patches →
Map pin is set to the town centre. Navigate to the street address above, not the pin.
hodgesfarmnc.com
Checked August 2026.