A no-gate-fee working farm on the Trumansburg Road out of Ithaca where you pay for apples, cider and pumpkins and nothing else — no rides, no festival, and no published 2026 fall dates.
No gate admission is listed anywhere on the farm's site; charges are per product for u-pick and farm-stand goods. Prices shown were from the 2025 season: cider $7 per half gallon and $12 per gallon; apples $10 per half peck, $15 per peck, $25 per half bushel.
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.
Indian Creek is the opposite of the ticketed farm festival, and that is the reason to go. There is no gate, no wristband, no timed entry and no list of forty attractions. You pull in off Route 96 outside Ithaca, pick apples or pumpkins, buy cider and donuts from the stand, and leave. For a certain kind of visitor that is exactly right, and for a family expecting a corn maze it is a wasted afternoon.
Nothing to walk in. Everything else is priced per product, and the numbers the farm had published when we checked were 2025 figures: cider at $7 a half gallon and $12 a gallon, apples at $10 a half peck, $15 a peck and $25 a half bushel. Assume those will have moved for 2026, but the shape holds — buying volume is substantially cheaper per pound than buying a small bag, so if you actually cook with apples, go big.
The farm publishes no phone number on the pages we read, and no exact 2026 fall start or end dates; its own site describes a June-through-October season and its most recent notice is about closing for winter and reopening in June. A Yelp listing shows the business as temporarily closed, which almost certainly reflects that ordinary winter shutdown rather than anything permanent — but between the missing phone number and the missing dates, there is no clean way to confirm that picking is open on the day you want to go. Check the website or their social feeds the morning of.
Two small scheduling traps. The farm is closed Mondays outside major holidays, and the cider donuts — for many people the actual point — are only made 11am to 5pm, Wednesday through Sunday. Arrive at 9am on a Tuesday and you get the farm without the donuts.
Beyond that, the usual Finger Lakes autumn rules apply. The pick-your-own rows are dirt, the parking is not paved, and October rain here is persistent rather than dramatic. Peak foliage weekends also put a lot of traffic on the roads out of Ithaca, so a weekday trip is faster in more than one sense.
Open Tuesday through Sunday, closed Mondays except major holidays, 9am to 7pm. Cider donuts are only served 11am to 5pm, Wednesday through Sunday, so a Tuesday visit or an early-morning one misses them entirely. The farm has not published exact 2026 fall dates — its site describes a June-to-October operating season without pinning the end — so check before a late-October drive.
Forty-five minutes to an hour and a half. This is a farm stand and a u-pick field, not a day out.
Not published, but a free-entry farm stand near a university town on an October Saturday morning is a predictable pinch point. Weekday mornings should be genuinely quiet.
Not published. Farm-stand parking in the Finger Lakes is typically gravel or grass, so expect soft ground after autumn rain.
You have kids expecting a corn maze, hayrides or a jumping pillow. None of that is here, and a child promised a fall festival will be disappointed by a farm stand. Skip it too if you need certainty — with no phone number published and no fixed fall dates, there is no way to confirm anything before you set off.
No. Nothing on the farm's site lists a gate charge — you pay per product for u-pick fruit, pumpkins and farm-stand goods.
A Yelp listing flags the business as temporarily closed, which appears to reflect the normal winter shutdown rather than a permanent one — the farm's own most recent notice says the stand closed for winter and reopens in June 2026. Check the farm's site before driving out in the shoulder season.
The farm lists pick-your-own pumpkins among its offerings but has not published 2026 fall dates. Its stated operating season runs June through October.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: Tuesday through Sunday; closed Mondays except major holidays. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission is free. No gate admission is listed anywhere on the farm's site; charges are per product for u-pick and farm-stand goods. Prices shown were from the 2025 season: cider $7 per half gallon and $12 per gallon; apples $10 per half peck, $15 per peck, $25 per half bushel.
1408 Trumansburg Road, Ithaca, NY 14850, in Tompkins County. It is one of 5 patches we track in Finger Lakes.
We track 5 patches in Finger Lakes, 1 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.
One caveat worth repeating: this farm had not published its 2026 dates when we last checked, while 3 of the 5 patches we track in Finger Lakes had. Treat any date you see elsewhere as last year's until the farm confirms it.
indiancreekithaca.com
Checked August 2026.