A genuinely free-to-enter orchard farm on the Highway 151 corridor where the only real cost is a hayride ticket the farm does not publish — and where the website was still showing 2025 notices in August 2026, so call before you drive.
The farm states plainly: 'We have no admission fee.' Hayride tickets are bought from the cashiers and the price is not published online. Goat feed pellets are 25 cents per handful.
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.
The Little Farmer’s defining fact is the absence of a gate. The farm says it plainly: no admission fee. That puts it in a small category of Wisconsin fall stops where a family can walk in, spend a couple of hours, and leave having paid nothing. For a family of four the day costs exactly what you choose to add to it — hayride tickets, a dollar or two of goat pellets, whatever leaves the bakery with you, and the apples you pick from September onward.
That matters more than it sounds. A free-entry farm is the low-risk option when you are travelling with an unpredictable toddler. If the nap arrives early or the weather turns, you leave, and there is no sunk ticket price making you grimly stay another hour to justify the spend. Ticketed festivals need a long visit to earn their gate price. This one does not.
The hayride price is not published anywhere. Tickets are bought on-site from the cashiers, and the farm has not put a figure online. So the single meaningful cost of the day is the one you cannot budget in advance. For a family of four, depending on what the farm charges, that is plausibly the difference between a ten-dollar outing and a forty-dollar one. It is a five-minute phone call, and it is the call worth making.
Twenty-five minutes, weaving through the orchards, the fields and a 40-acre stand of old-growth woods. That last part is the differentiator. Plenty of farms run a wagon around a field perimeter; a ride that actually goes into mature woods in mid-October is a different experience, and it lands in the same weeks as peak colour in this part of the state. The farm also states the ride is wheelchair accessible — a specific, checkable commitment that most farms of this size do not make.
When we read the activities page in August 2026 it was still carrying status notes from the previous season: the playground marked closed for 2025, hayrides marked done for 2025. That is a farm that updates its site once a year and had not got round to it yet. It is not a sign of a closed business, but it does mean the 2026 season dates are genuinely unknown rather than merely unlisted, and it means the playground’s current status is unknown too. If a working playground is part of why you are driving, ask.
The 8:00am weekday opening is two full hours earlier than the weekend, which is unusual — most farms do the opposite. If you have a weekday free, the orchard, the corn maze, the straw mountain and the barnyard at 8:30am on a Tuesday in early October is about as quiet as a Wisconsin fall farm gets. The trade is real, though: no hayride. Decide which half of the visit you actually want.
The maze is described as over six acres, which is a genuine walk without being a two-hour ordeal, and it sits alongside a straw maze and straw mountain, a goat ramp, a trike path and a pedal cart track, swings and tepees. Read that list again and notice the age it points at: this is a farm built for children roughly two to nine. There is no zip line, no ropes course, no haunted attraction. A ten-year-old who has been to one of the big ticketed farms in the region will find this small.
The bakery and applehouse — caramel, caramel apples — are the adult payoff, and in this part of Wisconsin the cider-and-donut queue is often longer than any ride queue. Budget patience accordingly on an October Saturday.
One seasonal note. Frost ends the corn here, and a 6:00pm close is a very different hour in September than it is on the last weekend of October, when it lands well after dark. Layers, not a jacket.
The farm has not published its 2026 season dates. What it does describe is a recurring pattern: hayrides run Saturdays and Sundays from Labor Day weekend through the end of October, 11:00am to 4:00pm. If the hayride is why you are coming, that four-hour weekend window is the visit, and arriving at the 10:00am weekend opening gives you an hour in the barnyard before the wagon starts. Weekdays open at 8:00am, two hours earlier, which is the quietest way to see the orchard and the corn maze — but the hayride is a weekend item, so a weekday trip is a different, smaller day. U-pick apples do not start until sometime in September, so an August visit means no picking.
Two to three hours on a weekend if you take the hayride, since the ride alone is about 25 minutes and the barnyard, straw mountain and trike path absorb small children easily. Ninety minutes on a weekday without the ride.
The hayride window is the pinch point: Saturdays and Sundays 11:00am to 4:00pm concentrates everyone who wants the ride into five hours across roughly eight weekends. The rest of the property is open every day and should absorb people comfortably. Weekday mornings from 8:00am are almost certainly the emptiest hours the farm has.
Not published. Most Wisconsin farm lots of this size are gravel or grass rather than paved, so plan for uneven ground and soft footing after October rain until the farm tells you otherwise.
The farm states the hayride is wheelchair accessible, which is a real and specific commitment rather than a vague claim. Nothing is published about the surface of the corn maze, the straw maze or the trike path, and a straw mountain is by definition not accessible. Call ahead if wheeled access beyond the wagon matters.
You need certainty. As of August 2026 the farm's own activities page was still carrying 2025 status notes, so the current season's dates, the playground's status and the hayride schedule were all unconfirmed. Skip it too if the hayride is the whole point and you can only go on a weekday, and skip it if you want a big-ticket festival with a zip line and a cannon — this is a quiet orchard farm, not an attraction park.
Malone sits on Highway 151 in Fond du Lac County, southeast of Lake Winnebago, which makes this an easy add-on to a drive between the Fox Valley and the Milwaukee side rather than a destination in its own right. Peak leaf colour and peak patch season overlap in this part of Wisconsin, so allow more time on the road than the map suggests on an October Saturday.
No. The farm states plainly that it has no admission fee. You pay only for hayride tickets, goat feed at 25 cents a handful, anything from the applehouse and bakery, and the apples you pick.
The farm does not publish a price. Tickets are bought from the cashiers on-site. Call 920-921-4784 before you drive if you need to budget the day.
The farm had not updated its site for the 2026 season when we last checked in August 2026 — it was still showing 2025 status notes. The pattern it describes is hayrides on Saturdays and Sundays, 11:00am to 4:00pm, from Labor Day weekend through the end of October, roughly a 25-minute ride. Treat that as the likely schedule, not a confirmed one.
The farm says u-pick apples are not available until sometime in September. An August visit will not include picking.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: Daily. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission is free. The farm states plainly: 'We have no admission fee.' Hayride tickets are bought from the cashiers and the price is not published online. Goat feed pellets are 25 cents per handful.
N9438 Highway 151, Malone, WI 53049, in Fond du Lac County. It is one of 3 patches we track in Fox Valley.
We track 3 patches in Fox 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.
What sets it apart locally: it has u-pick fields, farm animals, which most Fox Valley patches on our list do not.
One caveat worth repeating: this farm had not published its 2026 dates when we last checked, while 1 of the 3 patches we track in Fox Valley 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.
mytlf.com
Checked August 2026.