No orchard fee, free parking and a bakery worth the drive on its own — the cheapest way into a Westchester orchard, provided you arrive with cash and without your own bags.
Free parking and no orchard entry fee. Payment is cash or check only. You must use the farm's own bags - outside bags are not permitted.
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.
Stuart’s is the low-cost option in a county where fall farm visits have got expensive. There is no orchard fee and no parking charge; the money you spend is on apples, peaches, pumpkins and whatever comes out of the bakery. In a region where a family of four regularly pays $70 or $80 at the gate before touching a pumpkin, that is the whole argument for coming here.
Two rules do the work of an admission price, though, and both catch people out. The first is that this is a cash-or-check farm — no cards, stated plainly on the farm’s own site and confirmed independently by a regional guide. The second is that you must pick into the farm’s bags; outside bags are not permitted. Neither is unreasonable, and both are the kind of thing you want to learn on a website rather than at a till with three impatient children.
Apples, peaches earlier in the season, a pumpkin patch, weekend hayrides, a farm stand, a bakery doing cider donuts and pies, and permission to picnic. That list is short by Hudson Valley standards and deliberately so — this is a fruit farm, not an attraction park. If your children need a jumping pillow to be entertained, this is the wrong farm and there are several in Orange and Dutchess counties that will happily take $17 a head to provide one.
If, on the other hand, you want a couple of hours in an orchard, a wagon ride and lunch on the grass, the value here is hard to beat anywhere in Westchester.
Picking starts Labor Day weekend, which means apples first — the pumpkins come into their own from late September as they do everywhere in the Northeast. No closing date is published, and the honest answer is that farms of this type close when the crop and the weather decide, usually somewhere in the first half of November.
The other seasonal point worth planning around is daylight and cold. A 4:30pm pick-your-own cut-off in mid-September is mid-afternoon; by the last week of October the sun is going down not long after and the orchard gets cold quickly once it does. Arriving at 10am costs you nothing and gets you the best of both the light and the crowd.
The farm stand runs daily 9:00am-6:00pm and pick-your-own 10:00am-4:30pm, with hayrides at weekends only. Apple picking starts Labor Day weekend; no closing date was published. If you want the hayride you are going at a weekend, and in Westchester that means going at 10am rather than after lunch. If you only want to pick, a weekday is far calmer for the same price.
An hour and a half to two hours, including the bakery queue. There are no rides or play attractions to work through.
Weekends are the peak because the hayrides only run then, and a farm this close to the New York suburbs with no entry fee draws well. The daily farm stand hours are the release valve — a Tuesday morning pick is a different world.
Free and explicitly stated as such. No surface is given, so assume it is not paved and will be soft after autumn rain.
You only carry cards. Payment is cash or check only, with no stated exception, and there is no reason to think the bakery is different. Skip it too if you want a maze, rides or play structures — none are on the list.
No. Payment is cash or check only. Bring cash.
No. Parking is free and there is no orchard entry fee — you pay for what you pick and buy.
No. The farm requires you to use its bags and does not permit outside containers.
Weekends only. The farm stand is open daily but the hayrides are not.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: Farm stand daily; hayrides weekends only. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission is free. Free parking and no orchard entry fee. Payment is cash or check only. You must use the farm's own bags - outside bags are not permitted.
62 Granite Springs Road, Granite Springs, NY 10527, in Westchester County. It is one of 10 patches we track in Hudson Valley.
We track 10 patches in Hudson Valley, 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.
One caveat worth repeating: this farm had not published its 2026 dates when we last checked, while 2 of the 10 patches we track in Hudson Valley had. Treat any date you see elsewhere as last year's until the farm confirms it.
stuartsfarm.com
Checked August 2026.