Lyman Orchards

Lyman Orchards has been farmed by the same family since 1741, nine generations, on land overlooking the Connecticut River. It was voted Connecticut's best pick-your-own farm by CT Magazine and the best apple orchard in the nation by USA Today in 2025, and it grows two crops almost nobody else in America lets you pick.

What You Can Pick

In the farm's own words, "nearly 100 varieties of fruits from mid-June until the end of October":

• Honeyberries - early summer
• Jostaberries - early summer
• Strawberries - June
• Raspberries and blueberries - summer
• Peaches and nectarines - late summer
• Apples and pears - autumn

What It Costs

From the farm's daily picking update: $26 a peck bag and $11 a quart container.

The sunflower maze is separately ticketed at $12 for ages 13 and over, $7 for ages 4 to 12, free under 3, and the farm gives "$1 of every ticket sold" to Connecticut Children's cancer and blood disorder treatment centre.

Good to Know

The 2026 season is open, daily 8am to 4.30pm. Ring the 24-hour picking hotline on 860-349-6015 before you go: "We update the message as often as necessary (especially in rainy or overcast weather)."

The apples and peaches are eco-certified: "grown in ways that respect and preserve the ecology of our orchard." The Apple Barrel Farm Market is open year round and the Creamery seasonally. The corn maze opens 5 September.

Pro tip: come in the third week of June for the honeyberries and jostaberries, which are the real reason this farm is unusual. A honeyberry is an oblong blue fruit that tastes somewhere between a blueberry and a raspberry and ripens weeks before either; a jostaberry is a gooseberry crossed with a blackcurrant. Across nineteen American regions on this site, Lyman is the only farm that offers either for picking.