A cheap, small, genuinely charming October weekend add-on to a working Cambria County dairy - but the farm posts its schedule to Facebook and not to its website, so you must confirm the date before driving.
$7.00 per person; children under 2 free. Pumpkins, gourds, corn stalks, straw bales and Indian corn are sold separately. These figures are from a Visit Johnstown listing for a 2025 pumpkin patch date, not a 2026 announcement.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $28.00 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.
Vale Wood is a working dairy first. The pumpkin patch is an October weekend add-on to that dairy rather than a separate fall business, and almost everything good and bad about a visit follows from it.
The good part: it is cheap and it is small. Seven dollars a head, under-2s free, and an activity list - corn maze, giant corn box, games, farm animals, arranged photo spots, guided hayride - that a four-year-old will exhaust happily in ninety minutes and a ten-year-old will exhaust in forty. Nobody is upselling you a wristband. There is no all-access tier, no gem mining, no ride midway.
The awkward part: a farm that runs its patch as a side operation does not always publish it like a main one. The website’s events page states that October farm tours include a guided hayride and feature the seasonal pumpkin patch, then sends you to Facebook. That is the whole of it. No dates, no hours, no price on the farm’s own site.
The $7 per person figure, the free entry for under-2s, the 10am to 5pm hours and most of the activity list come from a Visit Johnstown listing - and that listing is for October 4, 2025, and is marked as passed. It is last season’s information. We are reporting it because it is the best available signal of what this farm charges and how it runs, not because anyone has confirmed it for 2026.
So the honest position is: expect roughly $7, expect a 10am to 5pm day, expect October weekends, and verify all three before you get in the car.
Two adults and two school-age children at $7 each is $28 at the gate. Two adults and two under-2s is $14. Either way this is the cheapest tier of gated Pennsylvania fall farm, and the reason is structural - you are not funding a ride park.
Where the money actually goes is the food. Homemade pumpkin ice cream and apple pie ice cream from the farm’s own milk, hot apple dumplings, weekend food trucks, and a dairy shop you will walk past on the way out. Four ice creams, two dumplings and a food truck lunch is realistically another $50 to $70, which means the food comfortably outweighs the admission. That is not a criticism - the dairy is the point of this farm and the ice cream is the reason people come back. It is just where your budget will land.
Then the pumpkins, gourds, corn stalks, straw bales and Indian corn, all priced separately. A porch’s worth of that is easily another $40.
Loretto sits high. Cambria County runs colder than either Altoona or Johnstown on the same afternoon, and by late October a 5pm close is not far off dusk. If you are choosing between an early October and a late October weekend, the earlier one gives you warmer ground, drier fields and more usable light. The later one gives you a better chance of the full autumn colour, which in this part of the state is genuinely worth the drive on its own.
Frost is the other calendar pressure. Corn mazes in central Pennsylvania come down when the crop does, and a small operation is less likely than a large one to keep an attraction running past its natural end.
Call 814-886-7171, or check the farm’s Facebook page, and ask for the specific October weekend dates and the current admission price. Those are the two things missing, they are the two things that determine whether the trip works, and they take one call to resolve. Do not plan a Sunday afternoon around a directory listing.
October weekends, 10am to 5pm on patch days. The farm has not published a 2026 calendar anywhere we could read, so the specific Saturdays and Sundays are unknown - the pattern in past seasons has been October weekends only. Go in the morning if the ice cream and apple dumplings matter to you, because a small dairy shop running a busy Saturday is the kind of operation that sells out rather than restocking.
Ninety minutes to two hours. This is a dairy farm with a pumpkin patch attached, not an attraction park, and the activity list is deliberately compact.
Not documented. The relevant dynamic is that October weekends are the only window, which compresses a whole season's demand into a handful of days. A farm this size with weekend food trucks and a dairy shop can feel full quickly at midday even without large absolute numbers.
Not published. Working dairy farms in the Allegheny highlands park visitors on grass or gravel, and October in Cambria County is wet and cold - assume a field lot and dress accordingly rather than expecting a paved surface.
Not published. The guided hayride farm tour is the part of the visit most likely to involve a step up into a wagon; if that is a concern, it is a specific question worth asking on the phone.
You need certainty. There is no published 2026 date, no published 2026 price, and no schedule on the website at all. Skip it too if you are looking for a big attraction park - there are no rides, no ticketed add-ons and no evening event here.
Loretto sits between Altoona and Johnstown, so either city works as the other half of the day. The dairy shop on site is a legitimate stop in its own right if the patch is not running.
The farm has not published 2026 dates. Its events page says October farm tours include a guided hayride and feature the seasonal pumpkin patch, then directs visitors to Facebook for updates - and no dates appear on the website. Past seasons have run on October weekends. Confirm on Facebook or by phone before travelling.
The most recent published rate we could find was $7 per person with children under 2 free, from a Visit Johnstown listing for an October 2025 date. That listing is for a past event, so treat $7 as last season's price rather than a confirmed 2026 figure. Pumpkins, gourds, corn stalks, straw bales and Indian corn are extra.
A pumpkin patch, a corn maze, a giant corn box, games, farm animals and set-up fall photo spots, plus guided hayride farm tours in October. The food is a genuine part of the offer: homemade pumpkin and apple pie ice cream, hot apple dumplings, weekend food trucks and the dairy shop.
For a family with small children, yes, on the basis of price and scale - but only once you have confirmed the date. A wasted drive to a closed farm is the main risk with this listing, and it is entirely avoidable with one phone call.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. In past seasons it has run: October weekends (the farm publishes its schedule on Facebook rather than its website). Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission starts at $7 per person. $7.00 per person; children under 2 free. Pumpkins, gourds, corn stalks, straw bales and Indian corn are sold separately. These figures are from a Visit Johnstown listing for a 2025 pumpkin patch date, not a 2026 announcement.
517 Vale Wood Road, Loretto, PA 15940, in Cambria County. It is one of 3 patches we track in Central PA.
We track 3 patches in Central PA. At $7 a head this one sits right on the regional median of $7.
What sets it apart locally: it has farm animals, which most Central PA 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 Central PA 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.
valewoodfarms.com · pumpkinpatchesandmore.org
Checked August 2026.