Route 19 and Brandt School Road get slower this time of year, and it has nothing to do with school buses. It's the turn lane into Soergel Orchards backing up on a Saturday morning, cars looking for a spot in the overflow lot behind the greenhouse before the tractors even start running. A few miles over on Wexford Run Road, the pace is different. Shenot Farm & Market fills up too, but nobody's circling for parking. People just pull in, buy corn, and maybe wander up the hill for a pumpkin on the way out.
Wexford ended up with two working farms that both turn into fall destinations every September and October, and the town has quietly sorted out what each one is actually for. It's not a rivalry. It's a division of labor that nobody had to vote on.
The Farm That Built a Production Out of Fall
Soergel Orchards has been on Brandt School Road since German immigrant ancestors started the operation in the 1850s. The family sold produce from a roadside stand there starting in the 1950s, and the first version of Fall Fest showed up in the 1970s as bins of produce set out for people to sort through. It has grown into something else entirely since.
The current Fall Festival runs on weekends from mid-September through the end of October, with Saturday hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Individual pieces of the day carry their own price tags: tractor rides run $4, apple picking is $7 for a quarter peck, and a flower bouquet from the pick-your-own beds is $13. Friday nights add a shorter hayride window from 5 to 7 p.m. for $4 a person.
Arsenal Cider has had a permanent spot on the property since 2015, open Wednesday through Sunday. Recent festival seasons have also brought in rotating pours from Aurochs Brewing and Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka, and the food barn runs its own menu of apple-wood smoked pulled pork sandwiches, pickle-brined chicken sandwiches, wings, and a sausage called Ciderbest made with the farm's own cider. Amy Soergel, whose family runs the operation, described the modern version of the event to Next Pittsburgh as "a mini festival," and the description holds up. It's not a produce stand with a hayride bolted on anymore. It's a full weekend program with a beverage lineup, a kids' area, and enough foot traffic that reviewers consistently flag the crowds and parking as the tradeoff for everything else on offer.
| Soergel Orchards | Shenot Farm & Market | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 2573 Brandt School Road, Wexford | 3754 Wexford Run Road, Wexford |
| Fall hayride cost | $4 (Friday night, 5-7 p.m.) | $2 per person, weekends in October |
| Signature food | Apple-wood smoked pulled pork, Ciderbest sausage | Homemade fudge, fresh-pressed cider |
| On-site drink vendor | Arsenal Cider, Aurochs Brewing, Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka | None on-site |
| Reputation among locals | The bigger production, worth the wait | The quieter alternative |
The Farm That Stayed a Farm
Shenot Farm & Market has been selling sweet corn as its signature crop since 1950, and the operation has stayed close to that identity even as the fall season around it has become a bigger draw. Hayrides out to the pumpkin patch and corn maze run on weekends in October, priced at $2 per person, with hours generally landing between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. and a shorter window on Columbus Day. The farm also runs haunted hayrides on select evenings during the season.
What sets it apart isn't a longer activity list. It's the pace. One Tripadvisor reviewer wrote that visiting feels like "you've escaped the suburbs (and the highway)," which is a strange thing to say about a farm stand a few minutes off Route 910, but it tracks. There's no ticketed drink garden, no rotating brewery pop-ups, no need to plan around when the crowds thin out. You come for corn that's been fresh off the stalk since July, you notice the pumpkin patch on the hill, and you take the hayride up because it's two dollars and the kids want to go.
Multiple reviewers have made the comparison directly, describing Shenot's as the place they found after getting tired of the crowds at the bigger farm down the road. That's not a knock on Soergel's. It's just two different answers to the same seasonal question, and Wexford residents have clearly worked out which farm answers which version of that question for their own weekend.
Why the Split Makes Sense Once You've Done Both
The pattern that emerges isn't about which farm is better. It's about what kind of trip you're planning. Soergel's works as a destination, the kind of outing where you block out two or three hours, bring cash for tokens and food, and treat the parking and the crowd as part of the deal. People drive from well outside the North Hills to make a day of it, and the variety at the food barn and the drink vendors is built for that longer visit.
Shenot's works as an errand that happens to be fun. You're there for corn or apples anyway, or a bag of fudge, and the pumpkin patch is a bonus rather than the whole plan. It's the farm you hit on a Tuesday afternoon, not just a Saturday morning, since the corn maze and hayride run through the weekend but the market itself stays open most of the week.
Put those two uses side by side and it explains why nobody in Wexford treats this as a competition. A family doing a full fall outing with kids in costume for photos heads to Soergel's. A household picking up produce on the way home from somewhere else swings by Shenot's and grabs a pumpkin without ever planning to. Both trips start from the same zip code, and neither one cancels out the other.
The Season Doesn't Wait Long
Soergel's pick-your-own windows run on inventory as much as the calendar. Apples are typically available from summer through November, but the farm itself has noted that pumpkin and apple availability can run inconsistent in high-demand stretches, shifting with each year's harvest. Shenot's sweet corn, meanwhile, is a July-through-early-October crop, so the overlap between "corn season" and "pumpkin season" only lasts a few weeks before the corn disappears from the stand for the year.
That overlap window is really the only stretch when both farms are running their full fall lineup at once. Miss it, and Soergel's still has pumpkins and cider into November while Shenot's shifts fully into its pumpkin and gourd inventory once the corn runs out. Neither farm's fall season ends on the same date every year, so the safest plan is still to check each farm's own site before heading out, especially for anything tied to a specific weekend.
Where This Leaves a Wexford Weekend
None of this requires picking a side. It requires knowing what kind of Saturday you're planning. If the goal is a full outing with food trucks, a drink garden, and enough activity to fill an afternoon, Soergel Orchards on Brandt School Road is built for exactly that, crowds included. If the goal is a quick stop for corn, cider, and a pumpkin that doesn't require a parking strategy, Shenot Farm & Market on Wexford Run Road does that job just as well, without asking for the whole day.
Wexford ended up with both, a few minutes apart, and the town has been sorting itself between the two every fall for longer than either farm's current owners have been running the show.
If you're weighing what daily life actually looks like in a town like this, not just the school district or the commute time but the small stuff like where you'll spend your October Saturdays, that's the kind of local detail worth asking about before you sign anything. Pittsburgh Property Shark works this part of the North Hills every day and is glad to talk through what a neighborhood actually feels like to live in, long before the conversation turns to listings.
