Drive down SW 64th Avenue in Davie this week and you'll see hand-lettered signs back out front of a working farm that most of the town drives past without a second look. The pumpkin patch at Marando Farms & Ranch reopens for the season around September 26, stocked with orange gourds, pumpkin butter, and fresh apple cider. It's the same week every year, and it's easy to mistake for the whole story. It isn't. The patch is a seasonal layer on top of a ranch that runs a farmers market, a petting zoo, riding lessons, and a farm-to-table cafe on the other 350 days of the year, sitting a few blocks from the same rodeo grounds and historic schoolhouse that give Davie its western reputation in the first place.
That's the part worth understanding before you plan a Saturday around it. Marando Farms isn't a pop-up built for October. It's a family business that has been quietly operating in the middle of Davie since 2016, and the pumpkin patch is just the calendar catching up to a place that was already there.
A working ranch, not a themed attraction
Chelsea and Fred Marando started the operation in Fort Lauderdale before expanding the family business into the heart of Davie in October 2016. Their stated philosophy, buying food locally cuts down on how far it has to travel and how much energy that travel burns, shapes what the ranch actually does day to day. It isn't styled as an event venue with a farm theme bolted on. It's a functioning small farm with a market attached, and the market is stocked with what the farm and its network of local growers produce: eggs available for u-pick, honey, dairy, produce, and specialty sauces sold alongside a CSA share and a community garden plot.
The petting zoo reads the same way. Visitors describe goats, chickens, rabbits, a tortoise, a calf, ponies, and horses, several of them rescue animals the Marando family has taken in rather than acquired for display. That distinction matters if you're deciding whether to bring young kids expecting a manicured photo-op setup or a working barnyard with the smell and noise that comes with one. Reviews land closer to the second description.
What a Saturday there actually looks like
The rhythm of a weekend visit is simple enough to plan around:
- Weekend train rides and hayrides run late morning into the afternoon, priced at $5 each with free admission for children two and under
- The petting zoo and farmers market are open the same days, letting a visit double as a produce run
- The Zen Cafe handles smoothies, juice, and lunch, functioning as the ranch's answer to a coffee shop stop
- Riding lessons and trail rides are booked separately from the walk-up farm activities
- Birthday parties and barn events run on a private booking calendar distinct from the public weekend hours
The one detail that trips up first-time visitors is the schedule. The farm is closed on Wednesdays. Every other weekday it runs shorter hours than the weekend, and the difference is worth knowing before you drive over expecting a pumpkin picked mid-week.
Days | Hours |
|---|---|
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday | 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. |
Saturday, Sunday | 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. |
Wednesday | Closed |
During pumpkin season, a $5 entry fee applies where the rest of the year the farm is free to walk into. Calling ahead to confirm pumpkin stock, a habit local guides recommend every fall, still holds. A patch this size sells down fast on a good weekend.
The same zip code, two different downtowns
What makes the farm worth writing about now, rather than filing under "seasonal roundup," is where it sits relative to the rest of Davie's downtown corridor. A few minutes away on Davie Road, construction crews are finishing Saddlebridge Downtown Davie, a four story, four acre workforce housing complex built with western theming meant to nod to the town's rodeo history, expected to wrap construction by fall 2026. Further along, at the corner of Griffin Road and State Road 7, El-Ad National Properties marked the structural topping out of phase one on The District in Davie in February, a $1 billion, 2.8 million square foot mixed-use project that will eventually bring five residential towers, ranging from 20 to 24 stories, along with 36,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space to what used to be a dated shopping center.
Neither project touches Marando Farms directly. But they're going up in the same town, on the same handful of arterial roads, at the same time the farm is restocking its pumpkin patch and running $5 train rides on a schedule that hasn't changed much since 2016. Davie's identity has always carried both halves at once, the town that requires new developments to extend its horse trail network and the town landing a billion dollar residential tower complex within a mile of Bergeron Rodeo Grounds. The farm is a working example of the first half still functioning at full capacity while the second half rises around it.
That combination is easy to miss if you only think of Marando Farms as an October errand. The ranch runs riding lessons and trail rides year round, hosts a summer camp that fills up early enough that the farm posts signup reminders months in advance, and keeps a CSA and community garden going through seasons that have nothing to do with pumpkins. The patch is simply the most visible layer, the one that gets photographed and shared, sitting on top of a farm that was already open for business every other week of the year.
If you've lived in Davie long enough to have a mental map of where the horse culture still lives, Marando Farms belongs on it next to the rodeo grounds and the Old Davie School Historical Museum, not filed away as a Halloween destination that reopens once a year and disappears again in November.
The pumpkin butter and apple cider showing up on the farm's shelves this week are new seasonal additions layered onto a farm stand that never actually went dark.
Sklar Team keeps a running list of the businesses, festivals, and small institutions that make Weston and Davie feel like specific places rather than interchangeable Broward zip codes. If there's a corner of Davie you think deserves the same kind of attention Marando Farms just got, tell us about it. We're listening for the next one.