A well-documented weekends-only Pumpkin Festival in Lake County with a $15.99 base ticket that deliberately withholds the train and the produce cannons - decide on the $25.99 All Access before you buy, because upgrading later means paying twice.
General admission is $15.99 and covers most Fun Farm activities but excludes the train and the produce cannons; the All Access ticket is $25.99 and includes everything. Pumpkins picked in the field are additional.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $63.96 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.
Johnson’s has done something most farms in this directory have not: published a complete, dated, priced 2026 season before September. You know exactly which thirteen days the Fun Farm operates, exactly what the two tickets cost, and exactly what the cheaper one leaves out. That transparency is worth something, and it lets you make the only real decision this visit requires before you ever leave Ridge Road.
$15.99 general admission. $25.99 All Access. The gap is $10 a head and it buys two things: the train ride and the produce cannons.
For a family of two adults and two children, that is $63.96 against $103.96 - a $40 difference. Whether that is worth it comes down to a question only you can answer, which is whether anyone in your group is going to want to fire a produce cannon. If the answer is yes, buy All Access up front; buying base tickets and then discovering the cannons are walled off means either a disappointed child or paying twice.
If your children are small enough that a jump pad, a straw mountain and a goat village are the whole afternoon, the base ticket is the right call and $63.96 is a fair Lake County price for it.
Either way, remember what neither ticket covers: the pumpkins. Field-picked pumpkins are additional. A realistic all-in for four people on the base tier, with pumpkins and something to eat, sits closer to $100 than to $64.
Six Saturday/Sunday pairs plus Halloween. That is the entire 2026 season. It is a normal structure for a northwest Indiana farm and it has one predictable consequence: everyone who wants to go has thirteen chances, and most of them will choose a mid-October Saturday.
The two September dates, the 26th and 27th, are the quiet end of that. The corn is up, the field is picked over less, and the weather in northern Indiana in late September is usually better than it is a month later. The trade-off is that it feels less like Halloween, which for some households is the entire point.
October 31 is the last day and it is a Saturday. Expect that to be the single busiest operating day of the season.
Gates 10am to 6pm. Last admission 5pm.
This catches people out constantly. A farm advertising a 6pm close reads, to most planners, as somewhere you can turn up at 4:30 and get an hour. Here, 5pm is a hard door. Arrive at 5:05 and you have driven for nothing, at full ticket price for zero.
It also means the practical shape of the day is front-loaded. Arriving at 10am gives you eight hours for $15.99; arriving at 4:45 gives you seventy-five minutes for the same $15.99. There is no partial-day rate in evidence.
Jump pad, straw mountain, pedal karts, obstacle course, goat village, corn maze, tram rides. That is a list aimed squarely at primary-school children and their younger siblings. There is no haunted attraction on it, no night maze, no adult-oriented evening event. Teenagers will do the corn maze and the cannons and then want lunch.
The pick-your-own is the part that differentiates it from a play park. Pumpkins of any size, shape or colour, out of the field, is a genuine harvest experience rather than a decorated staging area - and northwest Indiana grows real pumpkins in real quantity, so the field is the farm’s own crop.
Northern Indiana in the last week of October gets dark early and cold fast. A 6pm close on October 24 is finishing within half an hour of sunset. Field parking after autumn rain is the standard hazard in this part of the state, and the straw mountain and obstacle course are both things children will roll around on regardless of what they are wearing. Bring a change of clothes for the car if your children are small.
Saturday or Sunday morning, from the September 26 opening through October 31, 2026. The festival runs six weekend pairs - September 26-27, October 3-4, 10-11, 17-18 and 24-25 - plus Saturday October 31. Gates are 10am to 6pm but last admission is 5pm, so the arrival window is really eight hours long and the useful one is the first three. Halloween itself falls on the Saturday in 2026 and is the final operating day, which will make it the busiest.
Three to four hours if you have bought All Access and intend to use it. Two to three if you are on the base ticket, since two of the attractions are closed to you.
Thirteen operating days is the crowd story. A season compressed into six Saturday/Sunday pairs plus October 31 concentrates every visitor into a small number of afternoons, and the mid-October weekends are the traditional peak everywhere in the Midwest. The 5pm last-admission cutoff also pushes arrivals earlier than a 6pm close would suggest.
Not published. Ridge Road is a main road and the farm operates a substantial retail market alongside the festival, so it is better set up for volume than a small farm would be - but the surface is undocumented and Indiana farm lots in October are usually gravel or grass.
Not published. Tram rides are on the activity list, which suggests the site is large enough that walking the whole thing is a real consideration. If mobility is a factor, ask about tram access when you call 219-962-1383.
Weekdays are your only free days. The Fun Farm operates on thirteen days across six weekends and Halloween, and nothing else. Skip it too if you want a single all-in price at the gate without doing tier arithmetic first.
County Line Orchard is within a couple of miles, so the two can be done in one trip - but both charge separately, and stacking two gate prices on the same day is a meaningful expense for a family of four.
General admission at $15.99 covers most Fun Farm activities but specifically excludes the train ride and the produce cannons. The $25.99 All Access ticket includes everything. Pumpkins picked in the field are extra on both.
Weekends only: September 26-27, October 3-4, October 10-11, October 17-18, October 24-25, and Saturday October 31. Hours are 10am to 6pm with last admission at 5pm.
Not for the Pumpkin Festival. The Fun Farm operates Saturdays and Sundays plus Halloween Saturday only. The farm market side of the business is a separate matter and may keep different hours, but the festival attractions will be closed.
No. Pick-your-own pumpkins are charged separately on top of either ticket. Any size, shape or colour is available in the field.
September 26 – October 31, 2026. Saturdays and Sundays only: September 26-27, October 3-4, 10-11, 17-18, 24-25, plus Saturday October 31. Hours: 10am-6pm, with last admission at 5pm.
Admission starts at $15.99 per person. General admission is $15.99 and covers most Fun Farm activities but excludes the train and the produce cannons; the All Access ticket is $25.99 and includes everything. Pumpkins picked in the field are additional.
8960 East Ridge Road, Hobart, IN 46342, in Lake County. It is one of 3 patches we track in Northwest Indiana.
We track 3 patches in Northwest Indiana. At $15.99 a head this one sits above the regional median of $5.
Its season runs about 36 days against a regional average of 57, so it is a shorter window than most of its neighbours — miss it and the nearest alternatives will still be open.
What sets it apart locally: it has farm animals, which most Northwest Indiana patches on our list do not.
There are 6 other patches we track in Lake County. All Northwest Indiana patches →
johnsonsfarmproduce.com
Checked August 2026.