Minnesota Harvest Apple Orchard

This is my favorite place to go for apples for years and years and years. I've been going here since I was a little kid.

This year based on the website I showed up with my family planning to just pick apples and not pay the $15 plus per person to do all of the facilities and activities.

The people in the Apple barn said that we could just pay for the bags and pick apples like we always have. When I got up to the entrance to pick apples the person at the gate informed me that no we also had to pay the $15 per person plus the fee per bag of apples so that we could pick apples.

There is no budging on this point and I feel like $100 for a 12 lb bag of apples is a little bit expensive even though it's a good experience.

Unless they change they're either prices or policies this is not a place I'll go back to.

While on vacation in October 2023, my wife, daughter and I went here with my mom and sister. When we arrived it appeared that there would be a lot of stuff to do but on the day we were there, a lot of the stuff was closed. We still had a good time though. They had a corn maze, apple picking, two giant inflatable pumpkins to jump on, a corn pit and many other things to do. They also had some goats and other small live stock. I would go here again but would need to go when they have everything open.

Took my daughter for a day at the orchard! She had a blast. Very family friendly. We picked apples, enjoyed the corn pit, petting zoo and all the treats and drinks! Parking is a nightmare if you go later in the afternoon. Get there when they open. Staff are friendly and ample given the acreage. Drink a cider and have an apple donut and watch the kids tire themselves out!

Cute and fun place! A couple other reviews mentioned this. You do not have to pay to have access to the shops. Other activities are additional money, we did like the Apple cannon but activities are a little expensive on top of the admission fee. We had a lot of fun walking around and seeing things! Highlight was definitely the Apple code slushee with donut on top! I am still thinking about the donuts... they were selling my favorite brand of Apple cider, peppin heights, however I am not sure if they actually make it there. It would be a bummer if they were just selling other peoples Apple cider (especially at $12 a gallon).

We have a usual rotation of places to go for Halloween/fall farm fun. This was our first time here. We had a great time here. We always get to these places early as there seems to be a tipping point where they get packed and super busy.

We went right for the bouncy/air-filled stuff. My son tossed himself around like a rag doll for hours. He laughed the whole time. I liked their bouncy things because they were huge flat surfaces vs a bounce house where kids are constantly colliding. Their setup gave the kids lots of space to move around. This is important when you have toddlers and you don't want them to get mauled by a bunch of 8 and 9-year-olds.

We also climbed on the bails of hay and went on a tractor ride. Before heading into the store, we headed over to the playground. It is just a typical city or town playground, but you know what? Kids don't care and have fun anyway. We finished our trip in the shop where we got my son a tractor toy and we got some donuts.

My friends and I had a wonderful time here; we're visiting from Texas and wanted to immerse ourselves properly in fall vibes. Loved seeing all the color of the changing leaves around us as we drove in-- it's all very scenic and I snapped a lot of photos. Plenty of parking from what I could tell. Nice shop with a variety of apple products, as well as a bar where you can get many yummy ciders (alcoholic and non-alcoholic). They also sell pastries (I especially recommend the cider donuts at $1 apiece), pizzas, and other hot dishes.

They were mostly done with apple picking for the season (mid-October), but they were able to find us a patch that had some trees with apples still on them and took us out via the tractor pull wagon. Charged us $10/bag. Was kind of slim-pickings, but we had fun nonetheless and found enough to bring back to the dorm. =) They tasted quite good (sampled 'em right there in the orchard, of course).

A decent amount of activities to do here as well. We bumbled our way through the cornmaze, blasted a bunch of apples from the apple cannon, played in the small pumpkin patch, and visited the farm animals (chickens, pigs, sheep, peacocks, and a goat). There's a play structure for kiddos to enjoy as well. We had to wait quite awhile for the apple cannon's tank to pressurize before we could use it though.

There are restrooms tucked away behind one of the buildings with plumbing, but port-a-potties are also available.

We ventured here for our Halloween pumpkins and gourds. The facilities were beautiful on a nice fall day. There is a large outdoor seating area and a big building with gift shop, food area and hard cider bar.

The struggles we had were figuring out pricing, where to purchase pumpkins that were outside and no shopping carts to use to carry them in. We found out you purchase at the hard cider bar, but would have to wait in line with the others purchasing drinks.

There was an area outside to purchase a bag and pick your own apples. It seemed very expensive, but we decided to buy the honey crisp that were already picked. They were the best honey crisp we've had! We actually ventured back for another bag a week later!

We tried a few ciders and were pleasantly surprised they weren't super sweet. Pricing was standard to most ciders by the glass.

They have a cute barn cat that wanders around. It was so cute. We will be back next year and hope it will be easier and we will bring our own cart in preparation.

We have a wonderful time they have many amenities for kids and adults. The food is delicious we have apple donuts, juice apples it's a great place to go visit and have fun.

We have been going here for the past 6 years or so and I believe this is the third owner the orchard has been through during that time. The orchard is now called "Ferguson's Minnesota Harvest". A lot has changed since we started coming here.

The first huge change is that the orchard now seems to be more an event type place, like a Sever's, rather than just an orchard. They have made some improvements, added some attractions, and cleaned up skunky pond area. It's a great place to do family pictures too. They added an area with cute little sheds/playhouses and we were able to get some nice pictures of our kids.

The apples as usual are fantastic. They have tons of varieties for pick your own. We picked mostly Cortland and Haralson. Better signage would be helpful because there were some areas that indicated two varieties and I really didn't know which was which.

I appreciate that the orchard was purchased by a family who wants to keep it an orchard and not houses. I would like to see them succeed, however I really don't love their business model. Charging $15 admission per person and then charging another $15 or whatever it is for a tiny paper bag of apples is a huge rip off. We are there to pick apples, my children are teens and aren't interested in a corn pit or trampoline. Under the previous owners, a good sized plastic bag for pick your own apples was $20 and there was no admission fee. Now it's an event attraction, with stuff for the little kids, but really not worth it if your kids are older than 10. You still have to pay money for some things like the apple cannon.

I am sorry to say that we probably will be looking for a new place to pick apples, which is so sad because Minnesota Harvest really does have the best apples. It's just doesn't make any sense for us to spend $75 to pick a bag of apples. We did go on the moo train and rode the tricycles, but it was more of a "we paid for it so we better do something" activity for us.

I don't like giving low reviews so I am giving them 3 stars because they are making improvements and I am sure if you have preschool age kids, they will love coming here a few times this fall with the "season pass". Again, we just like picking apples so it doesn't make any sense to come back in another couple of weeks to get more apples. We have a lot of apples. I don't think we need any more apples. By the time we finish them the season will be over.

This orchard USED to be our favorite. This business is now owned by a different group. The nearly hour wait for tickets to enter the orchard and it's activities took way too long. They had plenty of lines open, they just weren't moving. Two things I think were going on. 1) trying to move to setting up online accts (so you could use the free season pass that came with your admission) in an area with little to no internet & cell service. 2) it seems like a good deal or idea to have a pay once for admission all season but the wait to get a wristband for admission was so awful I'm not sure if we'll be back to use it.

The food and drink lines inside the building were so long. I waited 40 minutes in a line to find out most of what we were wanting to order were sold out. No signs on menu board, I wasted 45 minutes all to get a few cups of cider,

The Apple cannon line was so long because the staff would let you pick which apples you'd like to blast out of their air powered cannon. We'll of course each kid had to pick just the right ones which added quite a bit of avoidable waiting.

There's meager signage at best indicating which variety apples are where and the tractor ride was much shorter, nearly pointless IMO. We had to walk further into the orchard part of the business than where the tractor would drop you off at the one and only stop.

I'll perhaps give the new owners one more year to figure this out a little bit more before we look for a new favorite. Today sucked.