The driftless southwest's anchor fall attraction, with more than 30 things on one ticket including a zip line and a pumpkin cannon — but measure your children before you book, because the online price charges by height and the gate charges by age, and for some families the more expensive gate ticket is actually cheaper.
Online admission is $14.99 for anyone 37 inches and taller, with visitors 36 inches and shorter free. At the gate it is $16.99 for ages 5 and up, with 4 and under free - so booking online saves $2 a head. Food, treats and mums are extra.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $59.96 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.
Vesperman is the big one for this corner of Wisconsin. The driftless southwest does not have a dense cluster of fall attractions the way the Fox Valley or the Milwaukee ring does, and this farm has responded by building something with genuine scale: more than 30 attractions on a single ticket, including a zip line, a giant ropes course, a trebuchet and a pumpkin cannon. That is a different category of place from a free orchard with a bale maze.
It also means the sensible way to evaluate it is as an attraction park with a farm attached, not as a pumpkin errand.
Two ticket structures exist and they do not measure the same thing.
Online: $14.99 for anyone 37 inches and taller. Anyone 36 inches and under is free.
At the gate: $16.99 for ages 5 and up. Ages 4 and under are free.
The obvious read is that online saves $2 a head, and for most families it does — two adults and two ticketed children is $59.96 online against $67.96 at the gate, an $8 saving for two minutes of work.
But look at what happens at the edges. A four-year-old who has hit 37 inches, which most have, pays full price online and gets in free at the gate. For a couple with one tall four-year-old, that is $44.97 online versus $33.98 at the gate. The gate wins by eleven dollars despite the higher headline price. Run it the other way and a small six-year-old under 36 inches is free online and $16.99 at the gate, so online wins by seventeen.
This is not a trick the farm is playing; it is just two different systems that happen not to line up. But it does mean the standard advice to always book online is wrong for a specific and fairly common family shape. Measure your children, then decide.
Monday to Friday is noon to 7:00pm. Saturday is 10:00am to 7:00pm. Sunday is 10:00am to 5:00pm.
That is a nine-hour Saturday, a seven-hour Sunday, and a weekday with no morning at all. If your instinct is to do a farm in the morning and something else after lunch, four days out of seven make that impossible here. And if you are travelling any distance on a Sunday, the 5:00pm close is two hours earlier than the day before — it is the easiest mistake to make on this listing.
The 7:00pm Saturday close is worth thinking about at the end of the season too. On October 24 or 30, 7:00pm is fully dark in southwest Wisconsin and the temperature has dropped hard. A zip line and a ropes course at dusk in late October are a different proposition from the same attractions at 2:00pm in September. Layers rather than one coat, and consider whether small children will still be enjoying themselves at that hour.
Food, treats, mums and the pumpkins. That is worth stating flatly because it is the standard budget leak at a ticketed farm. Caramel apples, kettle corn and ice cream are all sold separately, and with a family of four already sixty dollars in, another twenty on snacks and twenty on pumpkins and mums turns a sixty-dollar day into a hundred-dollar one. It is not gouging — the ticket genuinely covers 30-plus attractions — but the gate price is a floor rather than the cost of the day.
The headline attractions skew older than most pumpkin farms. A zip line, a giant ropes course, a big swing and a 5-acre maze are for children who are confident and reasonably tall. That makes Vesperman one of the better options in Wisconsin for eight-to-fourteen-year-olds, an age group most patches lose interest from.
Younger children are catered for — mini maze, farmyard animals, bubble barn, haymow adventure, corn bin slides, flower fields — but a toddler is not using most of what you paid for, and the free-under-36-inches online rule is the farm quietly acknowledging that. If your group is entirely under five, a free-entry orchard elsewhere in the state is the better spend.
The farm publishes nothing about parking, accessibility, or whether the zip line and ropes course carry height or weight minimums beyond the ticket threshold. On a farm where those are the marquee attractions, a height restriction would be worth knowing before a child has queued for it. Call ahead if you have a borderline-sized child who has set their heart on the zip line.
The 2026 season is September 19 through October 30, closing the day before Halloween. Hours differ by day and it matters: Monday to Friday is noon to 7:00pm, Saturday is 10:00am to 7:00pm, and Sunday is 10:00am to 5:00pm. Saturday is the only nine-hour day and Sunday is the shortest at seven. Weekdays give up the whole morning. If you want a quiet visit with a full run at 30-plus attractions, a Thursday or Friday from noon is the best combination of low crowds and long hours; if you need a morning, Saturday is your only real option apart from Sunday's earlier close.
Four hours minimum, and a full day is defensible. At roughly $15 a head with more than 30 attractions included, a short visit is poor value. A zip line, a ropes course, a big swing, corn bin slides and a 5-acre maze are not things you get through quickly, and the maze alone will take a chunk of an afternoon.
Six weeks and open every day is a healthier calendar than most Wisconsin farms manage, which spreads demand out. The pressure points are Saturdays in the middle two weeks of October, when peak colour in the driftless region and peak patch season land together, and the noon opening on weekdays, which pushes the whole weekday crowd through one door at the same moment. On a busy Saturday, expect the zip line and the ropes course to carry the longest queues, because throughput on those is inherently slow.
Not published. Stage Road is rural Grant County and the lot is very unlikely to be paved. October in southwest Wisconsin is wet, and field parking after rain is the standard hazard at farms this size. Shoes you can hose down.
Not published. A zip line, a giant ropes course, a big swing, corn bin slides and a tire mountain are physical attractions by nature, and the farm does not describe accessible routes, an accessible wagon, or reduced pricing for a non-participating adult. Call 608-885-0314 before travelling if that affects your group.
You want a cheap, quick pumpkin errand. This is a ticketed attraction park where a family of four is roughly $60 before food, and the pumpkins, treats and mums are all extra. Skip a weekday morning too — the farm does not open until noon Monday to Friday — and skip a late Sunday plan, because Sunday closes at 5:00pm, two hours before Saturday.
Lancaster sits in Grant County in the driftless area, the unglaciated corner of Wisconsin where the ridges and coulees make the drive itself part of the day. The farm's own material places it within about an hour of Dubuque and Platteville, which makes it a genuine cross-border destination for tri-state families rather than a purely local stop. Autumn colour in the driftless peaks in the same fortnight as the patch season, so allow extra time on the ridge roads on an October weekend.
Online it is $14.99 for anyone 37 inches and taller, with 36 inches and under free. At the gate it is $16.99 for ages 5 and up, with 4 and under free. Booking online saves $2 per person, but the pricing switches from height to age, which changes who pays.
September 19 to October 30, 2026, seven days a week. Monday to Friday noon to 7:00pm, Saturday 10:00am to 7:00pm, Sunday 10:00am to 5:00pm. It closes the day before Halloween.
The farm advertises more than 30 attractions on the one ticket, including the 5-acre corn maze and mini maze, zip line, giant ropes course, big swing, trebuchet, pumpkin cannon, hay rides, wagon train, corn bin slides, duck races, tire mountain, farmyard animals, haymow adventure, bubble barn and flower fields. Food, treats, mums and the pumpkins you pick are extra.
Yes — a 5-acre maze plus a smaller mini maze for younger children. Both are included in admission.
September 19 – October 30, 2026. Monday through Sunday. Hours: Monday-Friday noon-7:00pm; Saturday 10:00am-7:00pm; Sunday 10:00am-5:00pm.
Admission starts at $14.99 per person. Online admission is $14.99 for anyone 37 inches and taller, with visitors 36 inches and shorter free. At the gate it is $16.99 for ages 5 and up, with 4 and under free - so booking online saves $2 a head. Food, treats and mums are extra.
8149 Stage Road, Lancaster, WI 53813, in Grant County. It is one of 2 patches we track in Southwest Wisconsin.
There is 1 other patch we track in Grant County. All Southwest Wisconsin patches →
vespermanfarms.com
Checked August 2026.