Eckert's Grafton Farm

Our take

What the record actually confirms

Eckert’s Grafton Farm is located at 20995 Eckert Orchard Rd in Grafton, Jersey County, along the Great River Road corridor near the Mississippi River. The phone number on file is 800-745-0513 — the same brand-wide number used for Eckert’s Belleville Farm elsewhere in this file — and the farm’s page is at eckerts.com/farms/grafton-farm. Hours are confirmed as Tuesday through Sunday, 9am to 5pm, meaning the farm is closed on Mondays.

The site displays apples as “Now Picking,” confirming that u-pick access is currently active, though it doesn’t provide exact calendar start or end dates for the season. A Kids’ Corral, described as an animal-interaction area, is the one specific activity confirmed for this location.

A smaller sibling to the Belleville flagship

The research notes describe Grafton as Eckert’s smaller sibling location to the flagship Belleville farm covered elsewhere in this file. Rather than the restaurant, bakery, multiple walking trails, and seasonal lighted trail confirmed at Belleville, this record has a much shorter list of confirmed amenities for Grafton specifically — just the Kids’ Corral. That doesn’t necessarily mean Grafton lacks other features; it may simply mean the pages checked for this location surfaced less brand-wide marketing content than location-specific detail, which is a pattern the research notes call out directly.

A distinct geography worth noting

What Grafton does offer that Belleville doesn’t is location: sitting along the Great River Road near the Mississippi River in Jersey County, rather than in the St. Louis Metro East proper where Belleville sits. The research notes frame this as a useful geographic anchor for southwestern Illinois, giving visitors in that part of the state or along the river corridor an Eckert’s option that doesn’t require driving into the Belleville area.

The gaps here are more pronounced than at the flagship location

Compared to the Belleville entry in this file, Grafton’s record is noticeably thinner. No apple varieties are named specifically for this location. No pricing is confirmed. No cider mill or cider donut offering is confirmed here, even though Belleville’s page named a specific donut shop. It’s plausible some or all of these amenities exist at Grafton too, given it’s part of the same company, but this record can only speak to what was found on the Grafton-specific page, and that page didn’t surface those details.

What to expect vs. what to confirm

Given the “Now Picking” status confirmed on the site, a visit to Eckert’s Grafton Farm can reasonably be expected to include current apple availability and access to the Kids’ Corral, within the Tuesday-Sunday, 9am-5pm hours. Anything beyond that — specific varieties, exact pricing, whether cider donuts are available at this particular farm — should be treated as an open question rather than assumed to mirror the Belleville location, since company-wide amenities don’t necessarily apply uniformly across every Eckert’s farm.

Bottom line for planning

Eckert’s Grafton Farm offers a genuine, currently active u-pick apple experience in a distinct Great River Road location, with confirmed hours and a Kids’ Corral for younger visitors. But because this record is thinner on location-specific detail than the flagship Belleville farm — no varieties, no pricing, no confirmed cider offering — a call to 800-745-0513 specifically asking about the Grafton location is worth making before assuming it matches what’s confirmed at Eckert’s larger sites.