Irons Fruit Farm

Our take

What’s actually confirmed here

Irons Fruit Farm sits at 1640 Stubbs Mill Rd in Lebanon, Warren County, roughly halfway between Dayton and Cincinnati. The record includes some of the more detailed hours in this dataset: May through October, Monday through Saturday 9am to 6pm and Sunday noon to 6pm, with Sunday hours extending to 10am-6pm in September and October specifically. November and December hours shift slightly earlier, closing at 5pm rather than 6pm. Three varieties are named for u-pick: Gala, McIntosh, and Honeycrisp, and both a cider mill and cider donuts are confirmed.

Pricing you can actually plan around

Irons posts a clear, bag-based pricing structure directly on its own site: a peck bag is $18, a half bushel is $29, and a bushel is $46. The record is explicit that this is priced by the bag, not by weight — meaning the amount of fruit that fits in a given bag size is what determines the price, not a per-pound scale. That’s useful for comparing against other orchards in this dataset that price by weight or don’t post pricing at all; it also means a bigger, more tightly packed bag effectively gets you a better per-apple deal than a loosely filled one of the same size.

Three varieties spanning the season

Gala, McIntosh, and Honeycrisp cover a reasonable spread of the apple calendar: Gala tends to ripen earlier in the season, McIntosh in the mid-season range, and Honeycrisp typically mid-to-late. Having all three named for u-pick suggests Irons maintains picking availability across a fairly wide window rather than a single short burst, though the record doesn’t specify which weeks each variety is actually ready.

Weather rules the calendar, and the farm says so

The clearest and most honest piece of information in this record is a direct quote from the farm’s own u-pick page: “weather and crop will determine time and availability.” Rather than posting a fixed 2026 date range, Irons directs visitors to Facebook for current status. That’s worth taking seriously — it means even with the detailed hours and pricing above, the actual day-to-day question of whether u-pick apples are open on the specific day you want to visit is something the farm itself says can’t be answered by the website alone.

Cider donuts on a defined calendar

One reliably dated detail: cider donuts are sold from mid-to-late September through Christmas, according to the record. That’s a wider window than u-pick apples are likely to run, so cider donuts may be a safer bet for a visit outside peak picking weeks, even if the apples themselves aren’t confirmed as pickable that day.

The bottom line

Irons Fruit Farm gives you more concrete planning material than most orchards in this dataset — real hours, real bag pricing, and three named varieties — but it also gives you an explicit warning not to over-trust that information for the actual go/no-go decision on u-pick. Check the farm’s Facebook page close to your visit, or call 513-932-2853, especially if you’re driving any real distance specifically to pick apples rather than to buy pre-picked bags or grab a cider donut.