On a cool September morning, the fields along McKenzie Road in Abbotsford, British Columbia, begin to fill with something more than pumpkins. They fill with tradition. For nearly five decades, the Maan family has worked this land, and each autumn they transform it into a sprawling celebration of the season they call Fall at the Farm — a festival of pumpkin patches, corn mazes, farm animals, seasonal food and wine, and, as the nights grow longer, a month of carefully engineered scares.
This year's edition runs from September 12 to November 1, and it arrives with the farm's Forest Pumpkin Patch expanded to include more pumpkins and photo ops, including what the family bills as Canada's Biggest Pumpkin House. Deeper in the patch, whimsical displays round out the landscape.
The expansion is the latest chapter in a story that began in 1977, when Jawahar and Gurbachan Maan — known to everyone as Grandpa and Grandma Maan — started the farm with the help of their three children. The family had immigrated to Canada from India four years earlier, where Kris Maan's grandparents had been farmers and his parents teachers. Unable to continue their teaching careers in their new country, the parents took whatever work they could find before the family turned back toward the land. They began growing cole crops before shifting to the strawberries, raspberries and blueberries that would make them famous.
In 1982, the Maans opened their first roadside stand at 1136 McKenzie Road. The small stand grew in popularity as the community fell in love with the farm's welcoming atmosphere and its strawberries. A second stand followed on Townline Road in 1995, and in 2006 the family moved to their primary location at 790 McKenzie Road, where they introduced a corn maze and pumpkin patch that same year. School tours and a play area came in 2007, and in 2012 a barn facility opened housing the Country Kitchen, Country Market, banquet hall and birthday party space. The estate winery arrived in 2013, along with the farm's first haunted corn maze.
A darker chapter soon followed. In 2014, fire destroyed the barn facility. The Maans rebuilt, and in the years that followed they expanded into year-round farm experiences. The Adventure Zone arrived in 2014, weddings began in 2016, and farm camps and major additions to Barnyard Adventureland followed in 2017.
Today the farm is run by Kris and his wife Devinder, with their four adult children — Preena, Gurleen, Gaurav and Amir — each bringing their own strengths. The family keeps its roots close, working together through the seasons.
That family spirit is on full display during Fall at the Farm. Visitors can tackle two enchanted corn mazes, working to uncover the secrets of the farm. Barnyard Adventureland has added a Corn Play Pit, joining three ziplines, jumping pillows, pedal go-karts, a wooden fortress, a bubble hut and giant board games. The barnyard is home to Highland cows, alpacas, donkeys, goats, pigs, mini horses and sheep, while the Wine Garden offers a place to relax.
The food at Mama Maan's Country Kitchen is a celebration of the season's flavours, with returning favourites including the Double Pumpkin Spice Cream, apple pie samosas, apple pie nachos, deep-fried mini donuts and Mama Maan's signature pumpkin pie.
Special events throughout the festival include fall-themed Goat Yoga. The event welcomes all ages, and dogs are permitted on select dates.
As October arrives, the farm shifts gears after dark. Maan Farms hosts its Halloween Fright Festival, combining four haunted attractions and live performances with the family-friendly Fall at the Farm experience. The Frightfully Fun Forest Pumpkin Patch glows with twinkling lights and drifting fog, offering a cozy, all-ages autumn experience.
New this year is a fourth haunt, joining three returning attractions. The butcher-themed haunt, billed as the Scariest Corn Maze in Canada, takes guests into the butcher's territory, past disinfection areas, bloodstained tools and increasingly horrific chambers before its finale. In another, guests enter darkness wearing hoods, encountering touch, footsteps, shadow beasts and unseen forces before the experience continues into Pitch Black; and 3D CarnEvil sends guests wearing 3D glasses through fluorescent scenery, bending walls, ultraviolet puppetry and distorted characters emerging from the darkness.
For the Maan family, the fall season is the culmination of a year's work and the heart of what they do. As Kris Maan once put it, the farm's sustainable business motto grew out of a single Easter egg hunt that broke attendance records and revealed the potential of pairing farming, family and fun. Nearly half a century after Grandpa and Grandma Maan planted their first crops, that pairing still draws visitors to the Fraser Valley each autumn — to wander through a forest of pumpkins, share a samosa, and make the farm their own.