Ask a Camarillo resident where to take the kids for pumpkins this month and most will say Moorpark. That's not wrong. Underwood Family Farms runs one of the biggest fall festivals in the county, and it's a reasonable default when nobody's checked what's actually inside city limits.
But Camarillo has three of its own. Not smaller copies of the Moorpark model, three genuinely different things that happen to all involve pumpkins. One is a multi-week festival built to replace a full day trip. One is a working organic farm that runs a corn maze because it's harvest season, not because it's trying to be an attraction. One happens exactly once a year, for about five hours, and then it's gone until next October. Picking the wrong one for what you actually want out of a Saturday is the easiest way to be disappointed by a perfectly good pumpkin patch.
The default answer involves leaving town
Underwood Family Farms, over in Moorpark at 3370 Sunset Valley Road, runs its Fall Harvest Festival daily through October 31 with a rotating set of themed weekends: Public Safety Weekend, Farm Country Weekend, Antique Tractor Weekend, Wild West Weekend, and All About Pumpkins Weekend closing things out. Weekday admission at the gate is $16. Weekend tickets, sold online only, run $25 to $34. Kids two and under get in free, and so does parking.
It's a full production, and for families who want pig races and a whole day of programming, it earns the drive. The point isn't that Underwood is wrong for anyone. It's that treating it as the only option means skipping past three patches that don't require getting on the freeway at all.
Three patches, three different jobs
Here's what's actually sitting inside Camarillo, and what each one is built to do.
| Patch | Where | What it actually is | 2026 window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conejo Family Farms | 5937 Ridge View St | A ticketed, multi-week festival with a corn maze, sunflower field, and live music | September 18 through October 31, closed Mondays and Tuesdays |
| McGrath Family Farm | 1012 W Ventura Blvd | A working organic farm stand with U-pick pumpkins and a corn maze, run on farm hours | Open on its regular roadside-market schedule, no separate festival calendar |
| Peace Lutheran Pumpkin Patch & Fest | 71 Loma Drive | A one-day, free-admission carnival hosted by the church | A single Saturday in late October, historically the weekend before Halloween |
None of these substitute for each other. That's the part worth sitting with before you pick one.
The one built to replace the day trip
Conejo Family Farms is the newest of the three. It opened for its first season in 2025, started by three families who turned an empty plot on Ridge View Street into a working patch from scratch. For 2026 it's running September 18 through October 31, closed Mondays and Tuesdays, open 2:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 2:30 to 8:30 p.m. Fridays, and 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. on weekends.
Admission is $15 Wednesday through Friday and $20 on weekends, with a $10 rate for seniors, military, and first responders sold on site. Kids five and under get in free, and so does parking. That ticket covers a hayride, a five-acre corn maze, a hay maze, the pumpkin patch itself, a sunflower field, and bounce houses, with the petting zoo running weekends only and live music adding to the atmosphere. Sunflowers are a dollar a stem if you want to cut your own. Sweet corn is a dollar an ear.
What separates this from a roadside stand is the programming built around it. The farm has hosted outdoor yoga sessions, a FIT4MOM workout morning, and an Art in the Park kids' painting activity, all staged among the pumpkins rather than bolted on as an afterthought. If your Saturday plan is the same shape as an Underwood trip, corn maze, photos, something for the kids to run through, this is the one that keeps you in Camarillo instead of on the 101.
The one that was never trying to be an event
McGrath Family Farm sits on Ventura Boulevard and has a different kind of history behind it. The family has been farming the Oxnard Plain since 1871, when Irish immigrants Dominick and Bridget McGrath settled the land, and the farm has been certified organic since 1995. This isn't a seasonal pop-up. It's a roadside market that happens to run a corn maze and offer U-pick pumpkins because it's autumn and that's what the fields are producing.
That distinction matters for how you should plan around it. McGrath doesn't publish a festival calendar with themed weekends or online ticket tiers, because it isn't built as a festival. It's a working farm first. If you're after the quieter version of pumpkin season, walking a farm stand that's been in the same family for over 150 years, picking your own pumpkin out of the field rather than off a display, this is worth the stop. Just call ahead before you make it the centerpiece of a plan, since farm hours can shift with the season in a way a dedicated festival's don't.
The one that only happens once
Peace Lutheran Pumpkin Patch & Fest, at 71 Loma Drive on the corner of Loma and Las Posas, is the one most likely to catch newer residents off guard, because it isn't a multi-week attraction at all. It's a single Saturday, run by the church, with free admission and small charges for individual attractions. In recent years it's landed on the Saturday before Halloween, and the 2025 edition marked its 15th annual run.
The scale is smaller and the spirit is different: hay rides, carnival games, inflatables, a dunk tank, cotton candy, pony rides, a Lionel train exhibit, and a kids' art show, all inside a few hours on church grounds rather than spread across a season. It's the patch to build a single afternoon around, not a recurring weekend habit, and it's easy to miss if you're only checking the farms with standing seasonal hours. Worth checking the church's site for the confirmed date before you plan your October around it.
Which one to actually plan around
If you're deciding where to spend your fall weekends, the three options answer different questions rather than compete for the same visit.
- Want the full day-out experience without leaving Camarillo? Conejo Family Farms is built for that, with enough going on to fill an afternoon more than once this season.
- Want a quiet stop for real pumpkins and produce, not a production? McGrath Family Farm is the one to keep in your regular rotation, not just for October.
- Want a single, low-cost family outing that doesn't require a season pass or a returning trip? Peace Lutheran's one-day fest is worth marking on the calendar the moment the date is confirmed.
Layering all three into the month makes more sense than treating them as competing choices. Conejo Family Farms for the weekend with the kids, McGrath for a produce run some Wednesday afternoon, Peace Lutheran for the one Saturday it happens. That's more fall than one trip to Moorpark gets you, and none of it requires leaving the city you already live in.
Camarillo keeps turning up details like this once you start looking past the obvious answer, whether it's where the pumpkins are or what's actually inside a listing down the street. Debbie Curran covers the neighborhoods around Ventura County the same way, one specific detail at a time. If you're thinking about what your own Camarillo home is worth this fall, request a free home valuation and get a straight answer, not a form letter.
