Urbandale's Fall Calendar Answers to Two Farms Older Than Every Subdivision Around Them

Drive west on Meredith Drive past the drive-throughs and the strip malls, and the development just stops for a few acres. Apple trees stand in rows behind a farm stand sign. No cul-de-sac has ever touched this ground, even though cul-de-sacs surround it on every side. That's Iowa Orchard, and the fact that it's still there, still picking apples, still charging five dollars at the gate, says more about how Urbandale actually spends its falls than any new restaurant opening or trail extension could.

Here's the thing nobody mentions when they talk about Urbandale's growth: the two institutions that structure the neighborhood's entire fall season, Iowa Orchard and Living History Farms, both predate the subdivisions around them by decades. The city built itself around two working farms instead of the other way around, and every October, residents still organize their weekends around a schedule those farms set, not one the city planned.

The Orchard Got Here First

The Etchen family's history with apples goes back to 1939, when a teenage grower named Winton Etchen planted his first fifty trees in northern Iowa. His son Bryan eventually brought the business to what's now the Meredith Drive site, establishing Iowa Orchard there in 1975, back when the address was still out in the country northwest of Des Moines. Over the following decades, Urbandale grew up around it. What used to be open farmland is now a residential suburb with strip malls and convenience stores pressed right against the orchard's fence line.

Bryan Etchen has talked about what it's like running a farm on a suburban lot that can't expand the way it once could.

"We've had to learn how to work with our small space."

That's the reality of farming inside city limits instead of outside them. The orchard on Meredith Drive isn't going anywhere, but it isn't growing either. It works with the footprint it has.

This fall, u-pick apple season at the Urbandale orchard runs Labor Day weekend through mid-October, Tuesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with last admittance at 4 p.m. Admission is five dollars a person, kids two and under get in free, and apples are priced by the bag once you're inside. The pumpkin patch opens on the same property in late September and stays open through Halloween. None of this requires a drive out of town. It happens on a residential stretch of Meredith Drive that most people pass without noticing there's still a working farm behind the tree line.

A 500-Acre Farm With Nowhere Left to Go, Either

A few miles away, Living History Farms tells a similar story at a much larger scale. The outdoor museum opened in 1970 on 500 acres in what's now the western edge of Urbandale, and it recreates three centuries of Midwest agricultural life across three working farm sites plus the 1876 town of Walnut Hill. General touring runs May 1 through October 14, and after that the farm shifts to reservation-only programming through the winter.

That mid-October cutoff means this fall's window for casual visits is short, and the farm has scheduled its biggest events to land inside it. Applefest is set for Saturday, September 26, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with historic interpreters demonstrating how 19th-century cooks turned apples into butter, cider, cake, and pie. It's included with general admission, though advance tickets are recommended.

Here's how the rest of the season lines up:

Once general touring closes, Urbandale's fall doesn't stop, it just changes shape. December brings the start of Iowa Demon Hawks indoor soccer season, which runs through March at Buccaneer Arena, the same venue that hosts the Des Moines Buccaneers of the USHL. It's not a coincidence that the neighborhood's outdoor farm season and its indoor sports season line up almost end to end. Somebody in this town has been paying attention to the calendar for a long time.

The One Block That Turns a Farm Trip Into a Full Saturday

None of this happens in a vacuum. A morning at Iowa Orchard or Living History Farms tends to end with lunch somewhere close by, and Urbandale's food scene has a specific set of names that keep coming up.

5 Borough Bagels does kettle-boiled bagels and cream cheese from New York-born owners who know the format. Coaches Kolaches, started by former Iowa State football player Brent Curvey, sells Texas-style Czech pastries in flavors ranging from strawberry and cream cheese to smoked brisket and jalapeno sausage, a genuinely odd but locally beloved combination. The Machine Shed has been a local institution for its farm-to-table plates, cinnamon rolls, and hash brown casserole. Chicken Coop draws a wall-to-wall-TV sports crowd for wings people specifically order extra crispy. Tito's Lounge mixes Mediterranean and American menus under one roof, gyros and cevapi next to pizza and smash burgers. And if dinner needs a reason to linger, Range Restaurant & Cocktail Bar pairs bison steak tacos and lobster rolls with six PGA-endorsed golf simulators, turning a Tuesday night into something closer to a tee time.

None of these are new. They're the places that were already doing steady business before this fall started, and they're the places absorbing the crowd that shows up after a morning of apple picking or Applefest.

The Parks Fill In Around the Edges

The farms and the food anchor the calendar, but the parks are where the in-between weekends happen. Walker Johnson Park packs in tennis and pickleball courts, four separate kids' play areas, an observation deck, a storywalk around a small pond, and a skatepark with two quarter pipes and rails. Walnut Creek Regional Park spreads out with scenic trails, sports fields, and picnic areas for anyone who wants more room to spread a blanket. Lakeview Park runs a community project called Art on the Trail, where locals paint themed two-by-two boards that get displayed around the park's pond, turning one of Urbandale's most-used walking and biking trails into a rotating outdoor gallery built by the people who actually use it.

What the City Is Debating While All of This Keeps Happening

At the same time the orchard and the farm run their unchanged fall schedule, Urbandale's city government is asking a much bigger question about its own downtown. The city is holding open houses on updated zoning rules for the downtown area, framed around a simple prompt: what should Downtown Urbandale look and feel like in the years ahead. Zoning determines where housing, restaurants, shops, and public space can go, and the meetings are happening at 7031 Douglas Avenue, in a building that used to house a GreenState Credit Union branch.

It's a useful contrast. City planners are actively reconsidering what downtown Urbandale should become, while a few miles away, an orchard established in 1975 and a history farm opened in 1970 are still running the exact fall program they've run for years, with no rezoning required. One version of Urbandale's identity is still being drafted. The other has been settled since before most of the current subdivisions existed.

Homemakers Furniture, the largest furniture store in the state, sits in that same older category. It's been part of the local landscape long enough that free cookies and lemonade at the door feels less like a marketing gimmick and more like a neighborhood habit nobody questions anymore.

That's the thing about Urbandale in the fall. New development gets discussed at open houses and zoning meetings. The actual rhythm of the season, apples in September, Applefest before the farm closes for the year, wings and kolaches after, indoor soccer once the trees go bare, runs on infrastructure that was here before almost anyone currently debating the city's future moved in.

If you're the kind of person who already has these Saturdays figured out, you don't need a real estate agent to tell you what's good about living here. But if a friend or family member ever asks what it's actually like to spend a fall in this part of the metro, you now have more to offer than "good schools and nice parks." You have an orchard that's been on Meredith Drive since 1975 and a 500-acre farm that opened in 1970, both still running the same fall programming they always have, regardless of what gets built or rezoned around them.

When the conversation eventually turns to finding a home in Urbandale or anywhere else in the Des Moines metro, Boutique Real Estate is the local team that already knows which block to eat on after a morning at the orchard. Search homes with us when you're ready.