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Montverde is small enough to walk across, sitting on green hills fifty to a hundred feet above Lake Apopka, which is how a settler from Vermont came to name it in the first place. Under 2 thousand people live here. The town’s central institution has been the Academy since 1912, when it opened as an industrial school with its own dairy, its own canning plant and a farm the students and teachers ran themselves. Right up to the 1960s a family could pay tuition by working that land.
The school has become something else entirely and there is nothing wrong with that. But the older idea inside it — that a child learns something real by handling animals and food rather than only reading about them — has largely stopped being available to children anywhere.
That is the tradition we are still in, forty-five minutes east. Cattle graze across open pasture; alpacas, donkeys, pigs, goats, chickens and rabbits come to the rail expecting the optional feed sold at the gate or online. A Tractor-Drawn Wagon Ride runs through the trees and a playground sits beneath old oaks. Entry is $18 for anyone 2 and older, free below, covering the whole property. Nothing is demonstrated at your children. They simply do it.
Coni and Bob Keyes opened Green Meadows in 1988 on shaded land in Kissimmee. Across nearly thirty years it became where children throughout this region first met livestock properly, arriving with classes, at birthday parties, or with a parent who wanted an afternoon spent outdoors. Then it closed, and seven years passed with the space it left unfilled.
The farm operates again at Lancaster Ranch Park, assisted by the City of Kissimmee, and the reopening protected what was there rather than reinventing it. Cattle, alpacas, donkeys, pigs, goats, chickens and rabbits all stay near enough for a child to touch. The wagon ride still loops out around the pasture. The old oaks still hold the heat down. Wider ground, unchanged purpose.
You will find us at Lancaster Ranch Park, 1881 Jack Calhoun Drive, Kissimmee, FL 34741, some thirty-five miles and roughly forty-five minutes east of Montverde, generally down through Clermont to US-27 or across via Winter Garden to the 192 corridor. The road leaves the hills behind fairly quickly and opens out into ranch country.
Pick the day to start with. Opening runs 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM Wednesday through Friday and 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM on weekends; we are shut Mondays and Tuesdays. Last admission is 1:00 PM Wednesday to Friday with 2:00 PM on weekends. Weekday mornings are the quietest of the week, which the youngest visitors appreciate, though from Montverde the weekend hours leave a more comfortable margin. Wednesdays carry Grandparents Day, one grandparent free alongside each paid general admission.
Bring lunch along. No cafe operates on the property, only vending machines, so put a picnic together with plenty of water and take one of the shaded tables kept aside for it. Everyone wants a sun hat, sunscreen and shoes that close. None of the ground here is difficult, but it is pasture rather than a paved path and behaves accordingly.
Then drive east. Tickets can be booked online first or bought at the gate on arrival, with no reservation needed for general admission. Entry is $18 a head from 2 years up, free below, and we accept all major credit cards while taking no cash whatsoever. Ten to nineteen guests come in at $15 each, twenty or more at $12 each on a reservation, and every 20 paid earns one free. Ask about the annual pass if this looks like becoming a fixture. Feed is an optional few dollars, sold at the gate or added to your tickets online.
Plan Your Visit
Each fall the Pumpkin Zone opens and the farm reaches its busiest point of the year. Worth being exact about it: we are not a pumpkin patch, and we do not grow pumpkins on this land. What the Zone does is give every paying guest a pumpkin to choose and take home, included with admission. It is open every day we are open right the way through the season, not only on weekends. The Halloween Candy Hunt falls on 2 weekends close to Halloween.
Birthday parties barely need organizing. Set a date and time, pay up front, and your tent is reserved for your celebration. A tent is $450 for up to 25 guests with anyone extra at $15, and four of them run per day on Saturdays and Sundays, tables in place. Every guest gets the whole farm, so the animals, the wagon ride and the playground do all the entertaining and you plan none of it. The look of the day and the food are yours to sort out. Do mention to your guests: pony rides and lettuce for the animals are optional extras, bought at the gate or added to your tickets online, and every bit of it is outdoors.
School groups and larger parties are genuinely welcome on the group rates, which begin at ten guests: $15 per person from 10 to 19 and $12 per person from 20 upward with a reservation, plus one free admission per 20 paid. Easter Egg Hunts appear in spring alongside other seasonal events across the year, all posted to our Special Events page and released first via Facebook and Instagram. Settling up beforehand carries everybody through the entrance and out to the paddocks a good deal sooner.
We sit at Lancaster Ranch Park, 1881 Jack Calhoun Drive, Kissimmee, FL 34741, some thirty-five miles and roughly forty-five minutes east of Montverde. Most families run down through Clermont to US-27, or across by Winter Garden toward the 192 corridor.
It is far enough to be worth planning rather than deciding on the morning, particularly midweek when the gates shut at 1:00 PM. A weekend hands you an extra hour at this end. Do consult your maps app before departing, as both routes shift considerably with the hour.
Entry runs $18 per person for everybody aged 2 and above, children under 2 free. The ticket covers everything on the property, animals, wagon ride and playground included, with nothing else to pay once you are in and parking thrown in. Bring a card; cash is not taken.
Bigger groups get a better rate: $15 each for 10 to 19 guests and $12 each from 20 upward on a reservation, with a free admission for every 20 paid. There is an annual pass covering a year of unlimited visits, which pays off for families who come back across different seasons. Animal feed is an optional few dollars at the gate, or added to your tickets online — and it is the best money you will spend.
Not here, forty-five minutes east or anywhere on our land. Green Meadows is a petting farm, not a pumpkin patch, and we grow nothing on the property. The Pumpkin Zone is what opens each fall, and every paying guest chooses a pumpkin from it and takes it home free with admission.
What earns the trip is where it sits: open pasture, deep shade and animals in the background of every photograph, in a month that rarely looks like fall in this state. The Zone is open every day we are open rather than on set weekends, and the Halloween Candy Hunt runs on 2 weekends around Halloween. The dates are listed on the Special Events page and go out first on Facebook and Instagram.
Happily. Fix the date and time, pay in advance, and your tent is reserved for your celebration. It runs $450 for up to 25 guests with extras at $15 a head, and there are four each day on Saturdays and Sundays with tables set out.
Since guests have the run of the place, the entertaining sorts itself before you have thought about it. The animals, the wagon ride and the playground cover it among themselves. Tents arrive bare, so how it looks and what everyone eats is your call. Mention to guests that pony rides and lettuce for the animals are optional extras, bought at the gate or added to your tickets online, and that the day happens outdoors from beginning to end. Weekend tents go quickly once fall starts.
Lunch, mainly. We have no cafe, just vending machines, which does surprise people who assumed otherwise. There are shaded tables set out for the purpose, and half an hour eating outdoors with cattle grazing past the fence is no hardship. Bring a good amount of water as well, particularly in the hotter part of the year.
Other than that, everyone should dress for a farm rather than an outing: shoes that close, hats, sunscreen. Old oaks cover nearly all the ground so it stays cooler than you might think, though the weather does as it likes. If the sky looks doubtful before you set out from Montverde, call us at (407) 994-2775 and we will give you a straight answer.
Regularly, and they are some of our favorite days. Group rates begin at ten guests: $15 per person from 10 to 19, and $12 per person from 20 upward with a reservation, which additionally carries one free admission per 20 paid. A class and its parent helpers usually clears twenty without difficulty.
Reserve ahead and pay in advance where you can, since it moves a large party through the entrance markedly faster on the day. There is open ground here rather than a fixed route, so a group naturally spreads out and finds its own pace, and the shaded picnic areas give everybody somewhere proper to sit and eat together.
Know Before You Go
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