16 Best Bay Area Pumpkin Patches for Families

Most Bay Area patches open in late September and run through Halloween, October 31. Farms typically announce exact opening dates in early September — the big farm patches (Spina Farms, Lemos Farm, Arata, G&M Farms) reliably run the whole month of October.

Fully free admission: the Highway 92 farm stands in Half Moon Bay (Farmer John's, Pastorino Farms), Clancy's in San Francisco, Westbrae Nursery in Berkeley, Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, and Nicasio Valley in Marin — you only pay for the pumpkins. Most of the big farm patches (Spina, Lemos, Arata, G&M, Petaluma) are also free to enter, with pay-per-attraction tickets for rides and mazes.

Mostly no — working farms with animals on site typically restrict dogs. Nicasio Valley allows service animals only, and Petaluma Pumpkin Patch, Smith Family Farm and Ardenwood explicitly say no dogs. The clear exception is Clancy's in San Francisco, which welcomes well-behaved leashed dogs.

The Petaluma Pumpkin Patch runs the region's biggest — a 4-acre corn maze that becomes a flashlight night maze on fall weekends. G&M Farms in Livermore, Spina Farms in Coyote Valley, Smith Family Farm in Brentwood and Queen's in Saratoga also run corn mazes, and Arata in Half Moon Bay has the famous alternative: the Minotaur's Labyrinth, a genuinely hard 2-acre hay-bale maze redesigned every year.

Weekdays in October are far quieter, and some farms charge for parking or require reservations only on weekends. Weekends bring the full experience — all attractions running, food vendors, and peak-season crowds, especially the two weekends before Halloween.