The Appleberry Farm

Our take

The short version

The Appleberry Farm, about 30 minutes west of Madison in Cross Plains, runs a simple per-pound pricing model — no flat bag fee, no admission charge, just $2.00 a pound for what you pick yourself. The farm has confirmed its 2026 opening date directly on its own site: Friday, September 4th. What it hasn’t posted is a closing date or a specific list of which apple varieties are actually growing there, so this is a farm best visited with a phone call in hand rather than assumptions about what you’ll find on the trees.

Pricing that rewards picking it yourself

Per-pound pricing is refreshingly transparent: $2.00 per pound for u-pick apples, $2.75 per pound for pre-picked. That quarter-per-pound gap is a real, checkable incentive to do the picking yourself rather than have staff fill a bag for you, and it’s a more granular pricing structure than the flat per-bag or per-peck rates some other Wisconsin orchards use. Without a per-bag equivalent posted elsewhere, it’s hard to say definitively whether Appleberry is cheaper or pricier than its neighbors overall — but the per-pound clarity itself is a plus for anyone trying to budget a family outing precisely.

An honest note about early fruit

One thing that stands out in this record is candor rarely spelled out this plainly: the farm’s own site states that early-season fruit tends to have cosmetic blemishes and is better suited to baking or pressing into cider than eating fresh off the tree. That’s a genuinely useful heads-up rather than marketing spin, and it suggests that visitors hoping for picture-perfect, straight-off-the-tree eating apples might get a better experience picking a couple of weeks into the season rather than on opening weekend, when the first fruit is likely to look rougher even if it tastes fine once baked into a pie.

Cider pressed on site, and a brat stand with apple relish

The record confirms both a cider mill and cider donuts on site — genuine fresh cider rather than a bottled product trucked in. On weekends, starting the second Saturday of the season, there’s also a brat stand serving up homemade apple relish, a distinctive enough touch that it’s worth timing a visit to catch it rather than showing up on a weekday. Since the specific second-Saturday start is tied to the September 4th opening, that puts the brat stand’s debut around mid-September, though the exact date isn’t spelled out beyond “second Saturday.”

What isn’t confirmed here

No apple varieties are named in this record at all — not one — so there’s no way to say from this data alone whether you’ll find Honeycrisp, McIntosh, or anything else on a given visit. There’s also no closing date, no admission fee (beyond the per-pound apple pricing), and no note on hours beyond the weekly schedule: Friday through Sunday, 9am to 5pm, and a shorter Monday-through-Thursday window of 9am to noon. Those weekday hours are worth flagging on their own — a four-hour weekday window means this isn’t a farm to plan an afternoon trip around outside the weekend.

Getting there

The Appleberry Farm sits at 8079 Maurer Road in Cross Plains, roughly 30 minutes west of Madison and part of the same Madison Area cluster as Eplegaarden and Sutter’s Ridge, both covered elsewhere in this research batch. The coordinates on file are Cross Plains’ city center rather than a geocoded street address, so navigate by the posted address.

Bottom line

Appleberry Farm gives you two of the most useful things a u-pick record can offer — a confirmed 2026 opening date and honest, specific pricing — while leaving the variety list and closing date genuinely unanswered. If exact apple varieties matter to your trip, call 608-798-2780 before you go; otherwise, the per-pound pricing and on-site cider make this a straightforward, well-documented stop for early fall.