Free to park and free to walk in, with every activity priced separately, so a doughnut run costs nothing and a full family day costs about the same as a ticketed farm once you have paid for four things.
No general farm admission and no parking fee. U-pick field admission $5 per person ages 3 and up; apples $13 a half peck or $22 a peck; pumpkins $8 each or three for $20; sunflower field $5; corn maze $8 per person; Back 40 Fun Acres $5 per child ages 3-15 on weekdays or $10 on festival days for ages 3-54 with 55+ free; 'Buy the Farm' all-access package $20 per person ages 3-54; season pass $45 per person.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $20.00 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.
Tanners charges nothing to park and nothing to walk in, and that single decision shapes the whole visit. You can drive up, buy cider doughnuts and a pumpkin, and leave without a ticket ever entering the transaction. In a state where the big fall farms now want twenty dollars a head before you have touched anything, that is worth saying loudly.
The trade is that everything else is itemised, and the itemisation is where people get caught.
The individual prices are: u-pick field admission $5 per person aged 3 and up, corn maze $8 per person, sunflower field $5, Back 40 Fun Acres $5 per child aged 3 to 15 on weekdays or $10 on festival days for ages 3 to 54. Apples are $13 a half peck or $22 a peck on top of the field admission. Pumpkins are $8 each or three for $20. Sitting above all of it is the Buy the Farm package at $20 per person for ages 3 to 54, and a season pass at $45.
Run the numbers before you queue. One activity is obviously cheaper à la carte. Two comes to $10 to $13. Three lands somewhere around $18 to $21, which is close enough to $20 that it stops mattering. Four separate activities is roughly $23 a person, and at that point the package is straightforwardly better. So the honest advice is: decide how ambitious your day is, and if the answer is three or more things, buy the package at the start rather than paying twice.
For a family of four doing the whole farm, that is $80. That is a real cost, and it is the same order as a single-ticket farm elsewhere in central Illinois. The difference is that here you can also choose to spend nothing.
This is the thing most likely to spoil a visit. The farm market and bakery are open daily from 8am to 8pm across September and October. Every outdoor activity, meaning u-pick, the corn maze and Back 40 Fun Acres, runs 10am to 5pm with last entry at 4:15pm.
Those long market hours read as a farm you can visit in the evening. You cannot, not for anything outdoors. Turn up at half past four and you will buy doughnuts, look at a closed maze and drive home. Build the day around the 4:15pm cut-off and treat the 8pm market close as a bonus for buying things on the way out.
The 8am market opening is the underused half of that. Almost no fall farm in Illinois opens at eight, and if you are the sort of person who likes an empty orchard and a warm doughnut before the crowd, that hour is the best thing on offer here.
The orchard opens u-pick and the corn maze on the first Saturday in September, which lands on September 5 in 2026. It publishes no closing date at all. Practically, that means late October is a guess rather than a guarantee, and frost is the real arbiter: once it arrives, the maze and the soft crops finish quickly even if the market carries on. If a specific week matters to you, phone.
Stark County puts this orchard in the hills north of Peoria rather than out on the flat, which is unusual for Illinois and makes the drive better than the average farm run. It also means the ground is not uniformly level underfoot and the wind finds you in October. Peak leaf colour overlaps peak pumpkin season here, so the scenic corridors carry more traffic on October weekends than the map allows for. Leave earlier than you think.
The orchard opens u-pick and the corn maze on the first Saturday in September, which is September 5 in 2026, and publishes no closing date. The market and bakery run daily 8am to 8pm through September and October. The critical timing detail is that every outdoor activity closes at 5pm with a hard last entry at 4:15pm, so a morning or early afternoon arrival is the only way to use the farm properly. Mid to late October for pumpkins; September for apples and the sunflower field.
Three to four hours if you buy the all-access package and intend to use it. An hour is plenty if you are only here for the market, the bakery and a pumpkin, which is a completely legitimate way to visit.
Weekend afternoons in October are the pressure point, particularly with a 5pm outdoor close compressing everybody into a seven-hour window. Weekday mornings should be quiet, and the 8am market opening gives you a genuinely empty hour before the outdoor side even starts at 10am.
Free, and the orchard says so explicitly, which is worth noting because several central Illinois farms now charge. The surface is not described; Stark County hill farms are typically grass and gravel, so expect soft ground after rain.
Not published. The orchard sits in the hills north of Peoria, so the terrain is less flat than most Illinois farms, and u-pick rows and a corn maze are field ground. Worth a phone call if wheels are involved.
You are arriving late in the day expecting a full visit. The 4:15pm last entry on outdoor activities is firm and the market staying open to 8pm does not help you get into the corn maze. Skip it too if you want one price covering everything without arithmetic, because this farm asks you to do the arithmetic.
Speer sits in the hills of Stark County north of Peoria, which is scenic driving country in October when the leaf colour and the pumpkin season overlap. Morton, which bills itself the Pumpkin Capital of the World, is on the other side of Peoria, so a weekend that takes in both the hill orchard and the pumpkin town is a realistic plan.
No. There is no general farm admission and no parking fee. You pay per activity: u-pick field admission is $5 per person aged 3 and up, the corn maze is $8 per person, the sunflower field is $5 and Back 40 Fun Acres is $5 or $10 depending on the day.
An all-access package at $20 per person for ages 3 to 54. It is worth buying once you plan to do three or four separate activities, and not before, since individual items start at $5.
The farm market and bakery are open daily 8am to 8pm in September and October, but u-pick, the corn maze and Back 40 Fun Acres run 10am to 5pm with last entry at 4:15pm. Arriving after 4:15pm gets you the shop and nothing else.
Pumpkins are $8 each or three for $20. Apples are $13 for a half peck or $22 for a peck, on top of the $5 per person u-pick field admission.
Opens September 5, 2026 (closing date not published). Daily in September and October. Hours: Farm market and bakery daily 8am-8pm in September and October. U-pick, corn maze and Back 40 Fun Acres 10am-5pm, last entry 4:15pm..
Admission is free. No general farm admission and no parking fee. U-pick field admission $5 per person ages 3 and up; apples $13 a half peck or $22 a peck; pumpkins $8 each or three for $20; sunflower field $5; corn maze $8 per person; Back 40 Fun Acres $5 per child ages 3-15 on weekdays or $10 on festival days for ages 3-54 with 55+ free; 'Buy the Farm' all-access package $20 per person ages 3-54; season pass $45 per person.
740 IL-40, Speer, IL 61479, in Stark County. It is one of 5 patches we track in Central Illinois.
We track 5 patches in Central Illinois, 3 of which are free to walk into. At $5 a head this one sits below the regional median of $9.95, 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.
There are 2 other patches we track in Stark County. All Central Illinois patches →
tannersorchard.com
Checked August 2026.