You better be-leaf we’re open for the Fall Festival!

Sonny Acres iconic family-friendly festival runs September 17th for a limited time through October 30th.

FALL in love with our non-stop family fun fit for all ages at Sonny Acres Farm Fall Festival. Pick the perfect pumpkin, enjoy a variety of amusements and attractions including everything from our Wacky Worm roller Coaster to a ride around the property on the Sonny Express Train, take fun to new heights our giant jumping pillow, get baaack to nature and feed the farm animals, enjoy great food at our outdoor grill and much more!

Stop in at our Farm Fresh Market for produce, sundries and one of a kind decorations. Our gourmet sweet shop features handmade candies and treats.

CHICAGO’S BEST HAUNTED EXPERIENCE – HAUNTED BARN AND HAUNTED HAYRIDE OPEN SEPTEMBER 30th to OCTOBER 30th!

The haunted experiences feature a fantastic all new haunted barn and haunted hayride spectacular – days & times vary – see website home page for details.

What Is a Fall Festival?

Across the country, Americans love festivals. Arts festivals, music fests, food celebrations — the list goes on. From a small village to the biggest metropolis, autumn is celebrated with festivals. The themes and styles found in a local fall festival vary widely depending in large part upon the region, culture, and typical autumnal weather.

Often, a fall festival pays homage to Halloween, either as part of the celebration or as a reason for it. Haunted houses and ghostly fetes abound during the month of October. These fall festivals might feature people dressed as spooks, all manner of mechanical ghoulishness, and settings that have been transformed via cotton batting and black paint into spiderwebs and tombs.

Fall festivals that place food front and center might offer a pie eating contest with apple and pumpkin pies as the runaway favorites. Other typical autumn nibbles include apple fritters, apple butter, and apple cider. In fact, many fall festivals, especially in the northern states, are dedicated to the apple in all its glorious manifestations.

Apple bobbing and hay rides in other fall festivals give the youngsters of today a glimpse of what life was like in the long ago. It’s not unusual to find a fiddler or two and a banjo playing favorite old-time mountain tunes at fall festivals as well. In colder climes, a fall festival might end with a huge bonfire around which friends, neighbors, and strangers huddle, gazing into the mesmerizing, dancing flames.

While there are thousands of fall festivals spread across the nation that celebrate the bounty and range of the harvest, others hold a single local product in highest regard.

– Cynde Gregory

The Halloween Tradition

In the late 1800’s there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborhood “get-togethers,” than about the supernatural. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate.

The first year All Saints’ Day and Halloween showed up on the calendars, the newspapers and magazines made a big deal about it. Suddenly, everyone knew about Halloween and began celebrating it by lighting bonfires and having masquerade parties.

The first official citywide Halloween celebration in the United States, occurred in Anoka, Minn., in 1921. In the 1920’s and 30’s Halloween became a secular but community centered holiday which was celebrated with parades and town wide parties.

By the 1950’s vandalism had to be brought under control and by this time Halloween was more of a child’s celebration. Treats were handed out in order to prevent tricks like lawn rolling at each home.

Those traditions and more have made Halloween the country’s second largest holiday, it’s just good clean fun!