Kuehnert Dairy Farm Sells Its Own Milk at Fall Festival

Kuehnert Dairy Farm’s Fall Festival is open on weekends from September 11 to October 25, 2026, at $15 a person on a working dairy northwest of Fort Wayne. Children 2 and under get in free, and a $30 season pass covers every remaining Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The 6-acre corn maze this year marks 250 years of American history. The family has used these same weekends since 2013 to do a harder job, which is to sell milk it now bottles on the farm instead of sending every gallon out for someone else to label.

Weekends on Cook Road Run Through October 25

The gate is at 6532 West Cook Road in Fort Wayne, a short hop off U.S. 33. The 2026 season opened Friday, September 11, and the last session is Sunday, October 25, which works out to 21 public days if the farm holds the posted calendar.

Fridays run 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturdays run 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., the only window that covers a full day and a night maze. Sundays run 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are nonrefundable, and food is a separate ticket at the tent.

HOURS AND TICKETS FOR 2026

Two ordinary visits already match the season pass, which is why the farm sells it as a local habit rather than a souvenir. Advance purchase is on the farm site, and every family has to sign an agritourism waiver before the gates, because the calves, the parlor, and the ice cream share one yard.

A Fifth Generation Stopped Selling Only Other People’s Milk

The Kuehnerts have farmed a stone’s throw from Fort Wayne since 1897. Nathan, Sarah, Andrew, and Brittany Kuehnert, the fifth generation, still raise registered Holsteins on 1,200 acres of corn, hay, soybeans, wheat, alfalfa, and rye grass grown as feed.

On those acres they milk 300 cows each day and bottle that milk on the farm. Visitors who walk past the festival games can look into a freestall barn the family calls home for “our girls,” then watch Lely A4 robots, a Lely Juno feed pusher, an AI24 monitoring system, and a robotic calf feeder do the quiet work that used to mean a 4 a.m. pipeline.

After 125 years, we continue to look for ways to keep our family part of the farm. In 2013, we added a Fall Festival to invite neighbors to the farm.

Kuehnert Dairy Farm, farm history page

The same page says the family is moving from dairying for other people’s bottles to milking for its own. That line is the business, and the festival is how neighbors first walk into it.

HOW THE FARM OPENED THE GATES

1. 1897: The family starts farming near Fort Wayne and builds a Holstein herd.
2. 2013: The first Fall Festival invites neighbors onto the property.
3. February 2024: Kuehnert Milk House opens as an on-farm store and bottling room.
4. March 2025: Home delivery of glass-bottle milk starts in the Fort Wayne area.
5. September 11, 2026: The 14th festival season opens with an America 250 maze.
6. October 25, 2026: Posted last day of the 2026 festival.

The Homestead, a barn the family rents for parties and weddings, holds up to 150 guests on the same ground. Birthday groups and church vans now sit a few hundred yards from the parlor that still runs when the bounce pad is dark.

More Than 25 Stops on a Working Dairy

The farm’s 2026 activity map names more than 25 stations, and almost all of them ride with admission. The layout is paced for a long Saturday. A 25-minute tractor hayride alone eats a slice of the afternoon, and the wagons are built so a wheelchair can roll on.

Cows in the robot parlor come in on their own clock, 24 hours a day, which is the one exhibit that does not care whether it is Friday night or Sunday noon. Pam, the farm’s longtime Holstein matriarch in the show-ring story, also appears as a teaching cow that kids can try to milk.

STATIONS THAT SHOW THE FARM, NOT JUST THE FAIR

• Corn maze: Six acres cut for America 250, with a vintage milk-truck ride through the stalks.
• Hayride: A 25-minute loop across the property and past the herd, wagons accessible.
• Robotic milking: A viewing room onto Lely robots that milk when each cow walks in.
• Freestall barn: Close contact with the milking Holsteins the family still calls its girls.
• Baby calves: An open pen the farm flags for family photos.
• Pam the Holstein: A hands-on milking test on the farm’s best-known cow.
• Jump pad: A 70-by-30-foot bounce field aimed at kids who still have another grilled cheese in them.
• Milk House cafe: Ice cream, curds, pizza, and the bottles that leave this property.

Other stops fill the gaps between those: a pedal-kart track and Little Kuehnert Town, a spider web that holds 27 people, milkman hamster-wheel races, a rope maze, wagon basketball, a corn pit, Straw Mountain, ninja-style courses, a pumpkin tent with free paint, and a food tent whose Mousetrap grilled cheese is the house order. Bring a souvenir cup if you want the refill price later.

America 250 Cut Into Six Acres of Corn

The maze is the one new picture the farm is selling this fall. The copy on the activities page tells guests to get lost in a little piece of America, then spells out that the 6-acre cut celebrates 250 years of American spirit, adventure, and ordinary fun.

That theme matches the country’s 250th anniversary year, and it is also a practical crop decision. Corn that will be silage in November is a ticketed walk in September, which is how a feed field earns a second check before it is chopped.

Little kids who will not finish the full cut can still ride the Milk Truck Express through the stalks. The rest of the map, from the corn pit to the pumpkin tent, is built so a family can bail out of the maze and still use the rest of the $15.

Locals already treat the place as a full-day stop rather than a 20-minute pumpkin grab. The hayride, the parlor window, and the cafe line are enough to burn a Saturday even if nobody finishes the America 250 path.

Fewer U.S. Farms Still Sell Their Milk

A 300-cow Holstein herd is a real commercial dairy, not a petting zoo with a gift shop. It is also a size that has been under pressure as milk production concentrates on fewer, larger farms.

The 2022 Census of Agriculture, in a USDA summary, counted 9.3 million U.S. milk cows and $52.8 billion in cow-milk sales. University of Illinois farm economists, working from that Census, found 39 percent fewer farms sold milk in 2022 than in 2017, the steepest drop between neighboring Censuses since 1982.

THE HERD AROUND THIS FESTIVAL

• This farm: 300 milking cows, milk bottled on the same property.
• U.S. 2022 Census: 24,094 farms sold milk, 39 percent fewer than 2017.
• U.S. cows, 2022: 9.3 million head, $52.8 billion in sales.
• Indiana, June 2024: 188,000 milk cows and 374 million pounds of milk that month, per USDA’s Indiana field office.

Indiana still ships a lot of milk. It ships it from fewer parlors than it used to. A family that can pull neighbors onto the farm on 21 fall days, then sell them a glass bottle and a standing order, is doing the arithmetic that commodity milk alone has not been doing for mid-size herds.

The Milkman Route Starts Where the Festival Ends

Kuehnert Milk House, at 6524 West Cook Road beside the festival field, is the year-round version of the same bet. The store opened in February 2024 with milk, butter, cheese curds, and ice cream from the 300 cows across the drive, plus flavors the farm has run in cotton candy, coffee, orange cream, and root beer alongside chocolate and strawberry.

The Udder Upp Cafe inside the building sells artisan pizza, baked curds, hand-dipped scoops, specialty shakes, and beer, including a beer float and a wine milkshake the festival map bothers to name. Outside festival weekends the Milk House lists Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., with Monday closed.

Home delivery started in March 2025. Nathan Kuehnert, a co-owner, said an annual membership is $375, with $187.50 for half a year or $95 a quarter, and that fee is supposed to cover weekly drops. A week-to-week option adds a $10 delivery charge and a one-time $40 cooler. Empty glass bottles go back out with the driver.

You can literally get glass bottle milk delivered to your doorstep today, that the cow just produced yesterday.

Nathan Kuehnert, co-owner, Kuehnert Dairy Farm

Andrew Kuehnert, who manages the Milk House, has described moving milk from the parlor into an on-farm plant as a family dream they worked toward for years. Bottles now also show up in independent markets around northeast Indiana, with a few accounts farther out, so a guest who came for the maze can keep buying the same milk in town after October 25.

What $15 Buys Before the Food Tent

Admission covers the map, the parlor window, the calves, and the maze. It does not cover the Mousetrap grilled cheese, the nachos, the soft serve, the flavored milk, or a s’mores kit for the fire pit. Pumpkins, gourds, Indian corn, and farm merch sit under the white tent as extra spend, with paint and brushes free once you buy the pumpkin.

The farm asks every group to sign the agritourism waiver online and bring the email receipt to the gate. Service animals are a FAQ item on the activities page; ordinary pets are not the plan. Restrooms and changing tables are on site, and the hayride is the clearest accessible route across the fields.

BEFORE YOU DRIVE OUT COOK ROAD

• Waiver: Sign it before you arrive and keep the email receipt for the gate.
• Food: Priced at the tent and at the Milk House, not inside the $15.
• Season pass: $30, worth it on the second visit, good through October 25.
• Groups: The Homestead barn is the private-party room during festival hours; email the farm for a quote.

Rain does not automatically kill a dairy festival, because so much of the draw is indoor or under tent, but the maze and the jump pad are outdoor bets. Check the farm site before a long drive on a bad Saturday.

After October 25 the bounce pad comes down and the Holsteins keep walking into the robots. The Milk House stays on the same road, still selling the bottles the festival spent seven weekends teaching Fort Wayne to want.