A working apple orchard, cider mill and bakery with a pumpkin patch attached - historically free to enter with small fees for activities - but the orchard's own website does not advertise the patch at all, so phone 830-200-0302 before committing to a 70-mile drive.
No admission price is published on the orchard's own site. A Texas Highways feature describes the patch as free to enter with 'a nominal fee' for some activities. The store, bakery and cafe are free to enter.
Almost every other patch in our Texas coverage is a pumpkin operation with things bolted on. This one is the reverse: a working apple orchard, cider mill, bakery and country store that puts on a pumpkin patch for a few weeks each autumn. That inversion changes what the visit is worth and who it suits.
The activity list has the usual farm-event furniture - a hay-bale maze, barrel train rides, flatbed hayrides, scarecrow dressing, a petting zoo, pony grooming and rides, pumpkin painting, sand art, live music. Fine, and standard.
The differentiators are the ones only an orchard can offer. Tours of the apple-processing line. Apple-eating contests. A cider mill. A bakery with a real local reputation - apple cinnamon cupcakes, apple pumpkin bread with maple icing, apple dumplings in cider sauce. A patio cafe. For an adult who has done four pumpkin patches in three Octobers and can feel the sameness setting in, that is the reason to come here instead.
It is also why the trip survives a bad pumpkin day. The store, bakery and cafe run 9am to 5pm daily, year-round. Even if the patch is shut when you arrive, the property is open and there is something to do.
Here is the problem, stated plainly. The orchard’s own website does not advertise the pumpkin patch. Not the dates, not the hours, not the price. Everything we can tell you about the patch - the Saturday-through-Monday October pattern, the 10am to 4pm hours, the free entry with a nominal fee for some activities, the activity list itself - comes from a magazine feature that carries no season year and lists an older address and phone number than the orchard uses today.
Medina is 70 miles from San Antonio. A round trip is 140 miles and most of a day. That is far too much to spend on a listing this thin without one phone call to 830-200-0302, asking a single question: is the pumpkin patch running this October, and on which days.
If the free-entry description holds, this is the least financially dangerous farm on our Texas list. Most of the ticketed operations near San Antonio and Austin ask $16 to $25 a head before anyone touches anything, which means a family of four is $70 to $100 down at the gate and then obliged to stay long enough to justify it. With a two-year-old, that obligation is a trap - the meltdown does not care what the ticket cost.
A free-to-enter patch with small fees for individual activities inverts the risk. You arrive, you see how the afternoon is going, and you spend accordingly. Twenty minutes and a photograph is a perfectly good outcome. So is four hours.
The spending here happens in the store, not at a gate, and it is genuinely easy to leave a country bakery having spent $60 on things you did not know existed twenty minutes earlier. That is the number to set in the car park.
The orchard grows apples, corn and hay. Nothing we found says where its pumpkins come from. Given the region and the scale, they may well be brought in like most of the state’s, and there is no claim to the contrary. Come for the apples, the cider and the bakery, which are unambiguously the real thing here, and treat the pumpkins as the seasonal decoration they probably are.
The orchard publishes no 2026 pumpkin-patch dates. Historically the patch has run Saturday through Monday during October, 10am to 4pm, which is a narrow four-figure window: three days a week, six hours a day. The store and bakery keep separate and much longer hours - 9am to 5pm daily - and the Patio Cafe runs 11am to 3pm daily. That gap is the useful part: even outside patch hours the property is open and worth the stop. Deep Bandera County in October is at its best in the morning, and a 10am patch opening lines up with it.
Two to three hours for the patch and the orchard side together. Longer if you sit down at the cafe or take a tour of the apple-processing line, and the drive out means most people will want to make a half-day of it regardless.
Historically three operating days a week over a six-hour window, which concentrates visitors. October Saturdays will be the peak. The Monday operating day, if it holds this year, is the quiet one and the reason to take a day off work.
Not published. A rural Highway 16 orchard will have field or gravel parking; nothing in the record describes the surface.
Not addressed. The store, bakery and cafe side is likely easier going than the patch and hayride area, but confirm on the phone if it matters.
You need certainty. The orchard's own site does not mention the pumpkin patch anywhere, and the activity list and Saturday-to-Monday pattern here come from a magazine feature that is not year-stamped. Skip it too if you want a big corn maze or night attractions - this is a hay-bale maze, a barrel train and a petting zoo, at orchard scale.
Medina is on Highway 16 deep in Bandera County, roughly 70 miles northwest of San Antonio. That is a genuine Hill Country day trip, not a stop on the way to something else, and autumn weekend traffic on the approach roads adds to it. Pair it with the drive itself rather than with another farm; the closest ticketed operations are an hour or more back toward the city.
We could not confirm 2026 dates. The orchard's own website does not advertise the pumpkin patch at all. A Texas Highways feature describes it running 10am to 4pm every Saturday through Monday in October, but that article is not year-stamped. Call 830-200-0302 before travelling.
No admission price is published by the orchard. The Texas Highways feature describes the patch as free to enter with a nominal fee for some activities. The store, bakery and cafe are free to enter.
The store and bakery run 9am to 5pm daily and the Patio Cafe 11am to 3pm daily. Those hours are on the orchard's own site and are much wider than the patch's historical Saturday-to-Monday pattern.
The magazine feature we drew the patch details from lists an older address and phone number on Highway 16. We have used the details from the orchard's current website - 14024 State Highway 16 North, Medina, and 830-200-0302 - which also match a recently updated third-party listing.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: The pumpkin patch has historically run Saturday through Monday in October; the store and bakery are open every day. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission pricing was not published when we last checked. No admission price is published on the orchard's own site. A Texas Highways feature describes the patch as free to enter with 'a nominal fee' for some activities. The store, bakery and cafe are free to enter.
14024 State Highway 16 North, Medina, TX 78055, in Bandera County. It is one of 3 patches we track in Hill Country.
We track 3 patches in Hill Country. 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 market, bakery or taproom, which most Hill Country 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 3 patches we track in Hill Country had. Treat any date you see elsewhere as last year's until the farm confirms it.
Map pin is set to the town centre. Navigate to the street address above, not the pin.
lovecreekorchards.com
Checked August 2026.