Stocker Farms: A Hundred Years in One Valley
Drive east out of Everett and the valley opens up fast. Farms flatten out on either side, the Cascades stack up ahead, and on a clear day Mount Baker shows up to the north like it's been waiting. Stocker Farms sits in the middle of it, behind a Big Red Barn you can see from the road.
For most people it's a pumpkin patch. That undersells it. From mid-September through Halloween the farm runs as a full-scale festival — a ten-acre pick-your-own patch, an iconic corn maze, and more than thirty attractions that range from pig races to zip lines to two giant jumping pillows. There's a beer garden. There are pumpkin cannons. On Friday nights the same corn becomes a haunted attraction that's been voted the state's number one.
It's also a real working farm that has been in one family for over a hundred years, which is the part that makes the rest of it interesting rather than just fun.
Fall has always been a special season at Stocker Farms. We love sharing the farm with our community and giving families a place to make lasting memories together.— Keith & Janet Stocker
Started with a cigar box full of change
Keith Stocker's grandfather Ed started the current farm in 1919, when he came of age and struck out on his own — a mile down the road from his parents, the first Stockers in Snohomish. Ed and his son ran a successful dairy for decades, until Highway 9 was built straight through the middle of their largest barn.
That didn't stop them. They switched to row crops and sweet corn, and Keith grew up sitting on the tailgate of his grandfather's truck selling it, making change out of a cigar box.
In 1983 his parents Ed and Edith opened a roadside stand at the end of the same driveway, selling sweet corn, vegetables — and a crop nobody yet knew was going to make Snohomish famous. Pumpkins.
The number of families that came in the fall kept growing and growing until we did not have enough room anymore.— Keith & Janet Stocker
So in 2000 they moved west across Highway 9, onto the ground where the old dairy farm had been, with room to build the thing properly — a Family Adventure Farm, complete with the Big Red Barn. Keith and Janet farm it now as fourth and fifth generation farmers, with their sons and a farm team they're careful to credit.
We've welcomed generations of families to Stocker Farms, and it's incredibly rewarding to see those traditions continue each fall.— Keith & Janet Stocker
A working farm in the Snohomish Valley
Stocker is about 45 minutes from Seattle, roughly half an hour from Everett or Lynnwood, and easily reachable from Kirkland, Bothell and Monroe. You can leave after breakfast and be home with a pumpkin before dinner — or stay through the beer garden and the haunt and make a full day of it.
The Snohomish River Valley around it is dense with working agriculture, and the town of Snohomish itself — ten minutes up the road — has a walkable historic main street if you want lunch that isn't a corn dog. Go on an ordinary weekend, not just the week before Halloween, and the whole thing is calmer.
The fall calendar
Everything here is crop- and weather-dependent, so dates can shift. The flash sales are worth setting a reminder for — they're the cheapest tickets get.
Our Fall Festival is about giving families a place to slow down, enjoy the farm, and create traditions that they will look forward to every year.— Keith & Janet Stocker
Things worth knowing before the gate
Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays bring burgers, kettle corn, pulled pork and food trucks. Midweek it narrows to donuts, hot dogs and espresso — plan lunch accordingly, or eat in Snohomish ten minutes up the road.
Local beer, wine and cider, open Fridays 6–10pm and Saturdays and Sundays 12–10pm. It's the reason an adult evening at a pumpkin patch actually works here.
$5 for unlimited runs on the Mega Slide (42" minimum), or $10 for the Super Pass, which adds the Toxic Blaster gallery. Everything else in the thirty-plus attractions is included with admission.
Proceeds support Ronald McDonald House, which houses families staying close to children in hospital treatment.
When the farm becomes a destination
The farm is unusually direct about the photo thing, and has built for it. There's the Pumpkin Barn, the antique phone booths, and pumpkin and sunflower arrangements set up around the property — all of it with the Cascades sitting behind. Sunflowers are hand-pickable during the first two Fall Days weekends, which is the narrow window where you can get flowers and pumpkins in the same trip.
The farm's stated reason for all of it is worth repeating: they want families to see where food comes from. Walk through a field of corn, see the weeds that grow alongside the pumpkins, look up and realize you're standing in the middle of the Snohomish Valley ringed by farmland and foothills. The zip lines are the hook. That's the point.
Stocker Farms, in one block
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