Ask three different Breinigsville neighbors what a trip to Grim's Orchard is like this month and you'll get three different answers. One will describe the corn maze, the goat snuggling, and a Casa Taco line that stretches past the barn. Another will describe a fifteen-minute stop for apples and green beans on the way home from work, no festival in sight, no line anywhere. Both are talking about the same farm at 9875 Schantz Road. Neither one is wrong.
The reason isn't luck or bad timing. It's the schedule Grim's Orchard runs on its own site, and that schedule splits the year into two different products. There's a quiet pick-your-own operation open most weekdays through mid-November, and there's a full Fall Festival that only exists on Saturdays, Sundays, Fridays in October, and Columbus Day Monday. If you've been planning your visit around when the leaves turn instead of which day of the week it is, you've been guessing.
The Weekday Farm Is a Smaller Farm
On non-festival weekdays, Grim's runs as pick-your-own only. Apples, vegetables, and potatoes are on offer from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with the last picking bags sold at 5 p.m. Pumpkin picking joined that weekday lineup on September 12 and continues on the same Monday-through-Friday hours through mid-November. On those days, that's the entire menu. No corn maze, no goat snuggling, no hayride, no food truck. Show up on a Wednesday afternoon expecting the festival, and you'll find a working farm stand and not much else, which happens to be exactly what some visitors are after when they want to grab produce without wrangling a parking lot full of strollers.
What Only Runs on Festival Days
The gap between the weekday version and the weekend version is bigger than most people expect. Here's how the two schedules actually compare this fall:
| Attraction | Regular weekdays (Mon–Fri, excluding festival days) | Festival Days (Sat/Sun, Fri in Oct, Columbus Day Mon) |
|---|---|---|
| Corn maze (8 acres) | Closed | Open, $7.29 |
| Goat snuggling | Closed | Open, $5.49 |
| Casa Taco food truck | Closed | Open, 11 a.m.–6:30 p.m. |
| Hayride | Closed | Open, $7.29 |
| Bounce pillows | Closed | Open, $4.99 |
| Cattle train | Closed | Open, $4.99 |
| Cut-your-own sunflowers & zinnias | Open, weather permitting | Open, weather permitting |
| Apple, veggie, potato picking | 10 a.m.–6 p.m. | 10 a.m.–7 p.m. (Sat/Sun), 10 a.m.–6 p.m. (Fri/Columbus Day) |
Picking bags run from $11.99 for a quarter peck up to $54.99 for a half bushel, and those prices hold steady no matter which day you go. Everything else on that list only turns on when the festival calendar says so. That's the part of the schedule that trips people up: the produce side of the farm barely changes week to week, but the entertainment side is entirely conditional on the date.
The Silo, the Taco Truck, and a Weather Warning
A few details are worth knowing before you go, and they don't show up on a typical events listing. Grim's built a corn kernel playground inside an actual grain silo, which is the kind of sensory detail that makes the difference for a five-year-old between "fine" and "can we come back next weekend." Casa Taco, the food truck bringing tacos made with produce, herbs, and spices grown right on the farm, got its start as a family restaurant in Sea Isle City, New Jersey, before setting up shop at Grim's for the fall season.
One more thing that matters if you're timing a trip around a specific Saturday: fall weather in the Lehigh Valley doesn't always cooperate, and Grim's has said plainly that hours can shift with it.
Grim's advises checking its website, Facebook page, or the Pick-Your-Own Hotline before heading out, since rain can close the corn maze or the picking fields with little notice.
That's not a formality. A farm running an 8-acre corn maze and open fields for hundreds of visitors a weekend has real reasons to close on short notice, and the farm's own guidance reflects that.
Picking the Day That Matches What You Actually Want
Once you see the split, planning gets simple. If you want the full experience, goats, tacos, the maze, hayrides, go on a Saturday, a Sunday, a Friday in October, or Columbus Day Monday. If you just want to fill a bag with apples or dig up a few pounds of potatoes without a crowd, go Tuesday through Thursday instead. The farm has also been hiring specifically for its fall events, which tells you the weekend crowds are real enough to require extra staff, not just extra attractions.
That crowd has been building for a reason beyond word of mouth. Grim's Sunflower and Zinnia Experience was voted "Best in the Lehigh Valley" by Lehigh Valley Style in 2025, and the flower fields remain open daily regardless of which version of the farm you're visiting that day. It's one of the only parts of Grim's that doesn't care what day of the week it is.
None of this changes what the farm is at its core: a family operation on Schantz Road that's been growing since Floyd and Bertha Reichert bought 17 acres back in 1939. It just means the version you get depends entirely on when you show up, and that's the kind of thing you only learn by paying attention to a place over multiple seasons rather than looking it up once before a single visit.
Knowing which Tuesday afternoon at Grim's empties out and which Saturday needs a plan is a small thing, but it's the kind of granular, season-by-season detail that's easy to miss unless you actually live a few minutes from Schantz Road. It's also the kind of local rhythm that tends to matter more than people expect when they're weighing whether Breinigsville's pace fits them, even before considering square footage.
If that conversation is somewhere down the road for you, Lori Bartkus knows this stretch of the Lehigh Valley by its actual weekday and weekend rhythms, not just by what's listed for sale. Let's Connect.
