Free parking, a free play area and a free wagon ride make this the cheapest real farm day in the metro east, but the farm's own web pages are years out of date, so phone before you drive.
The farm states that parking is free, the play area is free and the wagon ride is free - you pay only for apples, pumpkins and bakery items. No prices for produce or bakery goods are published on the pages read.
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.
Mills is the free-entry alternative to the ticketed farms of the St Louis metro east, and about 35 minutes east of the city it is close enough to be a real alternative rather than a theoretical one. Parking costs nothing. The children’s play area costs nothing. The farm wagon ride costs nothing. You pay for apples, pumpkins and whatever the bakery sells you, and that is the whole transaction.
Set that against the way the bigger farms in this region now work, where a family of four can be seventy or eighty dollars down before anyone has touched a pumpkin, and the appeal is obvious. It is also a low-risk visit in a way ticketed farms structurally cannot be. If the weather turns, if the toddler melts down, if you have simply had enough after forty minutes, you leave. Nothing is wasted.
The farm’s own website pages are years old. The page carrying the hours, the season description and the free-activity list is dated Late Fall 2018. Those are the farm’s own words, and we are not going to pretend otherwise, but they are seven years stale and no 2026 dates appear anywhere on the site.
So everything below is the best available information rather than confirmed current information: Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 5pm, closed Mondays, a season starting sometime in July and running until noon on December 24. Some of the detail in this listing, including the street address and the pumpkin tours, hayrides with bonfires and Christmas trees, comes from a regional directory rather than the farm itself.
The action this calls for is simple and takes two minutes. Phone the bakery line. Ask what days they are open, what is picking, and whether the wagon ride is still running. Every one of those is a question the internet cannot currently answer for this farm.
The maze here is a three-story maze rather than a corn maze. That is a built structure, which has two consequences. It is not at the mercy of frost or a wet field, so it is likely to be standing in November when corn mazes across Illinois have been cut down. And it is a climbing, exploring experience rather than a navigating-between-walls-of-corn one, which suits a different age of child.
The other distinguishing feature is the length of the season. A farm that opens in summer and stays open until midday on Christmas Eve for Christmas trees is bridging two completely separate trades. Very few Illinois farms do that. If it holds true for 2026, it makes Mills a place you can use in October and again in December rather than a four-weekend proposition.
No prices for apples, pumpkins or bakery goods are published anywhere, so exact arithmetic is impossible. The structural arithmetic is still worth stating. With admission at zero, the floor for a family visit is the cost of one pumpkin. The ceiling is entirely a function of how many apples you pick and how long you linger in the bakery.
Compare that with the paid model down the road, where the first sixty to eighty dollars is spent before any choice is made. Neither is wrong. But if the goal is an afternoon outdoors with children and a pumpkin at the end of it, the free model wins on value every time, and the paid model wins only if the ride roster is genuinely what you came for.
Closed Mondays. Group offerings, meaning the educational pumpkin tours and the hayrides with bonfires, need booking rather than turning up. Madison County ground holds water after October rain like the rest of the state, and a 5pm close in late October puts you in the car around dusk. Boots and a jacket, and that phone call first.
The farm describes its season as starting sometime in July and running until noon on Christmas Eve, and publishes no 2026 dates at all. Hours are given as Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 5pm, closed Mondays. Treat all of that as the farm's own words rather than confirmed 2026 information, because the page carrying it is dated Late Fall 2018. For pumpkins, the first three weeks of October are the dependable window in southern Illinois; for apples, September into early October.
Two to three hours. With a three-story maze, a play area, farm animals and a wagon ride all free, there is no financial pressure to rush and no ticket clock running.
October weekends within reach of St Louis are busy everywhere, and a free-entry farm attracts more casual visitors than a ticketed one because there is no cost to a spontaneous trip. A weekday under the stated Tuesday to Sunday schedule should be much calmer. Closed Mondays.
Free, and the farm says so explicitly. The surface is not described. Madison County farm lots are typically grass or gravel, so expect soft ground after autumn rain.
Not published. A three-story maze is by definition a climbing structure rather than an accessible one, and picking rows are field ground. The farm has not published anything on this, so call if it matters.
You need confirmed, current information before committing to a drive. The farm's published pages are several years stale and no 2026 dates appear anywhere. Skip it too if Monday is your only free day, and skip it if you want a big ticketed attraction farm, because the appeal here is the opposite of that.
Marine sits in Madison County about 35 minutes east of St Louis, which puts it in the same orbit as the larger ticketed farms of the metro east. Pairing a free morning here with a paid afternoon elsewhere is a reasonable way to see both models of Illinois fall farm in one day, and to work out which one your family actually prefers.
No. The farm states that parking is free, the play area is free and the farm wagon ride is free. You pay only for apples, pumpkins and bakery items. No prices for those are published.
The farm gives Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 5pm, closed Mondays. Be aware that the page carrying those hours is dated Late Fall 2018, so confirm by phone before travelling.
Not in the record. The maze here is a three-story maze, which is a built structure rather than a field cut into corn. That makes it less weather-dependent than a corn maze but a different experience from one.
The farm describes it as starting sometime in July and running until noon on December 24, which would make it one of the few Illinois farms bridging pumpkins straight into Christmas trees. No 2026 dates are published to confirm that.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: Tuesday through Sunday. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission is free. The farm states that parking is free, the play area is free and the wagon ride is free - you pay only for apples, pumpkins and bakery items. No prices for produce or bakery goods are published on the pages read.
11477 Pocahontas Road, Marine, IL, in Madison County. It is one of 4 patches we track in Southern Illinois.
We track 4 patches in Southern Illinois, 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.
What sets it apart locally: it has a corn or crop maze, farm animals, which most Southern Illinois patches on our list do not.
One caveat worth repeating: this farm had not published its 2026 dates when we last checked, while 0 of the 4 patches we track in Southern Illinois had. Treat any date you see elsewhere as last year's until the farm confirms it.
There are 6 other patches we track in Madison County. All Southern Illinois patches →
millsapplefarm.com · pumpkinpatchesandmore.org
Checked August 2026.