The hour out of Omaha crosses a river and a state line before it runs out. Eight of these farms are in Nebraska — Valley, Ceresco, Wahoo, Blair, Avoca, Fremont, and two inside the Omaha city limits — and one is over at Crescent, Iowa, twenty minutes from downtown and closer in than most of the Nebraska ones. Every farm below carries its real town and its real state.
The far edges are Ceresco and Avoca, both about forty-five minutes out, one toward Lincoln and one down toward the river bottoms. We left them in because an apple orchard and a pumpkin patch are the kind of places a family plans a Saturday around, not the kind you stop at on the way home.
Call first, or check their own page. Half this page is fall — apples, pumpkins, a tree farm — and those seasons move with the weather, not the calendar. One of the two dairies publishes no hours at all and wants a phone call before you show up with jars. Where a farm publishes hours we list them. Where it doesn’t, we say so instead of guessing.
pick your own apples, flowers and pumpkins — go in season, call first — this lane, every state →
roadside markets and on-farm stores, open when the crop is in — this lane, every state →
farm dairies selling off the place, described in the farm’s own words — this lane, every state →
beef, pork, chicken and eggs sold direct off the pasture — this lane, every state →
patches, cut flowers and fall festivals, roughly late September on — this lane, every state →
choose-and-cut, north of town — the dates aren’t published, so call — this lane, every state →
Answered off this page’s own list — nothing here that isn’t above.
Three farms in this ring run pick-your-own, and none of them are berry farms. Martin’s Hillside Orchard at Ceresco is the apple orchard — apples, pumpkins and cut flowers, with the fall season opening September 5. Bloom Farm & Pumpkin Patch down at Avoca is a fall farm: pumpkins, gourds and rows of zinnias you cut yourself. Nelson Produce Farm at Valley keeps a u-pick garden alongside its market, June through late October.
Two farms on this page sell it off the place. Beauty View Farm at Wahoo is a fifth-generation Saunders County dairy milking Guernsey, Jersey and Holstein cattle, with a farm store open eight to eight, seven days — raw milk and cream, plus cheese, butter, yogurt and ice cream. Bryant Dairy Farm is a Holstein dairy on the northwest edge of Omaha; customers bring their own jars, and since the farm publishes no hours, call 402-689-0730 before you drive out.
Three of them, at three different distances. Nelson Produce Farm at Valley is the closest, about thirty minutes out, with pumpkins off the same ground as the sweet corn and a Fall Fest around them. Martin’s Hillside Orchard at Ceresco lets you pick pumpkins alongside the apples. Bloom Farm & Pumpkin Patch at Avoca opens for the fall and charges admission while the patch is on, so plan the afternoon.
If you raise it, grow it, milk it or cut it within about an hour of Omaha — either side of the river — and you’re not on this page, that’s our mistake and we’d like to fix it. Free listing, your links, your words, gone the day you ask.