A no-gate-fee Albany County orchard with a cidery and brewery attached, where you pay only for what you pick — but the weekday picking window shuts at 1pm and no fall dates are published.
No gate admission is listed; charges are per product for u-pick. Apple half-pecks run roughly $9-$11 depending on variety; blueberries $8.50 per quart; plums $7 per quart.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $36.00 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.
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 Ladder is an orchard first. There is no gate fee, no ticket tier and no attraction list — you come, you pick apples or pumpkins, you buy things in the store, and if you feel like it you stay for the cidery and brewery. That is the whole proposition, and for a certain kind of visitor it beats a forty-attraction farm park comfortably.
Pick-your-own runs Tuesday to Friday from 9am to 1pm, and Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 4pm. The farm store keeps much longer hours. Those two facts together produce the most common way to waste a trip here: arriving on a weekday afternoon, when the store is open, the brewery is pouring and the orchard is closed to picking.
The published picking hours also carry a condition — weather and picking conditions permitting. That is standard orchard language and it means what it says: a wet week or a picked-out block can close a field. If you are driving any distance on a weekday morning, it is worth confirming first.
Nothing to enter. Apple half-pecks were running roughly $9 to $11 depending on variety when we checked, blueberries $8.50 a quart and plums $7 a quart. The absence of a gate fee genuinely changes the risk of a visit — with small children, a trip that collapses after fifteen minutes has cost you nothing.
In this part of the country the apple side of autumn is not a sideline to pumpkins — it is the main event, and pumpkins ride along with it. Indian Ladder is squarely in that tradition, and the cidery and brewery on site are what make an adult visit worth more than twenty minutes. If you are choosing between this and a ticketed attraction farm, you are really choosing between an afternoon and an outing.
Pick-your-own pumpkins have their own parking, accessed from a separate road rather than the main entrance. Look that up before you set off, because following the main drive and then relocating is a slow way to start.
And the farm publishes no fall season start or end dates. The store hours listed on the home page appear to be summer hours. Both mean the late-October end of the season is uncertain territory — call 518-655-0108 rather than assuming.
Pick-your-own runs Tuesday to Friday 9am to 1pm and Saturday and Sunday 9am to 4pm, weather and picking conditions permitting. That weekday 1pm cut-off is the detail to plan around: arrive at 2pm on a Thursday and you get a farm store and a brewery, not an orchard. The farm store's listed 9am-to-6pm daily hours appear to be summer hours and may not hold through October.
An hour to ninety minutes for picking. Longer if you are staying for the cidery and brewery, which turn this from an errand into an afternoon.
Not published. A free-entry orchard within easy reach of Albany on an October Saturday is a predictable pinch point; the Tuesday-to-Friday morning window should be far quieter.
Pick-your-own pumpkins have dedicated parking reached via a separate road rather than the main entrance — worth knowing before you arrive, because it is easy to queue for the wrong car park.
You want a fall festival. There is no corn maze, no hayride and no attraction list here — it is an orchard, a store and a brewery. Skip a weekday afternoon too, since picking closes at 1pm.
No gate admission is listed. You pay per product for pick-your-own and for anything you buy in the farm store, cidery or brewery.
Tuesday to Friday it runs 9am to 1pm; Saturday and Sunday 9am to 4pm. Picking is subject to weather and crop conditions, so it can close without notice.
The farm confirms it offers pick-your-own pumpkins but publishes no fall season start or end dates. Check before driving out, particularly late in October.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: Pick-your-own Tuesday through Sunday; farm store daily. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission is free. No gate admission is listed; charges are per product for u-pick. Apple half-pecks run roughly $9-$11 depending on variety; blueberries $8.50 per quart; plums $7 per quart.
287 Altamont Road, Altamont, NY 12009, in Albany County. It is one of 4 patches we track in Capital Region.
We track 4 patches in Capital Region, 1 of which are free to walk into. At $9 a head this one sits below the regional median of $20, undercutting 2 of the 2 paid patches we track here. Entry here costs nothing, which puts it in the minority even in a region with several free options.
What sets it apart locally: it has u-pick fields, which most Capital Region patches on our list do not.
One caveat worth repeating: this farm had not published its 2026 dates when we last checked, while 2 of the 4 patches we track in Capital Region had. Treat any date you see elsewhere as last year's until the farm confirms it.
indianladderfarms.com
Checked August 2026.