A Day on the Farm 2026: Sheldon Creek Dairy Opens the Gates

One free Saturday of cows, barn demos, kites, live music and a makers’ market in Loretto

📍 Get Directions Register Free

The den Haan family throws open the barn doors once a year — cows, milking demos, a makers’ market, professional kite flyers, and live music, all for nothing. Nearly 800 people have already registered.

🎟 Free (register online) 👨‍👩‍👧 All ages 🐮 Meet the cows ☔ Rain or shine

💡 Free doesn’t mean walk-up. Every single guest — kids included — has to be registered online beforehand. Do it before you drive out.

Why Go What’s On Register The Farm Essentials Getting There Tips FAQ

✨ Why This One’s Worth the Drive

Most agri-tourism is a corn maze and a bag of apples. This is a working dairy farm letting you walk through it. Sheldon Creek is a real, third-generation operation in the Sheldon Valley — the den Haan family has farmed this land since the 1950s, milks a small purebred Holstein herd, and bottles everything on site. For one Saturday a year they open the whole thing up and let the public wander through.

The appeal is that it’s genuinely educational without being worthy about it. Kids meet the cows. There are barn demos. There are agriculture career showcases for older kids who might actually be thinking about it. And then there are professional kite flyers, live music, a makers’ market, and a chance to climb on a fire truck — so nobody’s bored.

It’s also completely free, and it’s about an hour north of Toronto, which makes it one of the better-value family day trips on the summer calendar. The catch — and it’s a real one — is that you must register online in advance. Nearly 800 people had already booked spots at the time of writing.

🚜 What’s On

Sheldon Creek hasn’t published an hour-by-hour timetable — it’s a come-and-go, five-hour open house rather than a scheduled program. Here’s everything the farm has confirmed for the day.

🐮 Meet the cows 🏚 Barn demos 🎶 Live music 🥛 Dairy samples 🪁 Professional kite flyers 🧺 Local makers’ market 🌾 Agriculture career showcases 🏒 Meet the Alliston Hornets 🚓 OPP 🚒 Firefighters

The farm describes this as a sneak peek and promises “so much more” on the day — expect additional vendors and activities to be announced on their Instagram and Facebook in the run-up to July 18.

🎟 Registration Free

There’s no charge, but this isn’t a turn-up-and-wander event. Sheldon Creek issues general admission tickets at $0.00 through their website, and they want one per guest — so if you’re bringing four people, book four spots.

How it works: head to the official event page, choose the number of General Admission tickets you need, and check out for $0.00. You’ll get a confirmation to bring with you.

🥛 A Bit About the Farm

Sheldon Creek Dairy is the den Haan family’s operation, built on land they’ve farmed since 1953 in the rolling country north of Bolton, above the Hockley Valley. They milk a small homebred Holstein herd and process everything on site — non-homogenized whole milk, chocolate milk, yogurt, kefir, labneh — bottled in the glass bottles you’ll have seen in grocery stores across the GTA.

They were the first dairy in Canada to produce 100% A2 milk, having bred exclusively for A2A2 genetics. That’s the sort of thing that sounds like marketing until you’re standing in the barn and someone explains it to you, which is more or less the point of the day.

The farm store is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. year-round, so the milk, yogurt, farm-raised beef, and the shelf of local preserves, honey and Ontario cheese are all there any time — not just on festival day.

📋 The Essentials

🚗 Getting There

Sheldon Creek Dairy sits on the 5th Concession outside the hamlet of Loretto, in Adjala-Tosorontio — roughly an hour north of Toronto, about 20 minutes from Alliston, and a short hop south of Highway 89. This is rural Simcoe County, so you’ll want a car; there’s no transit option worth attempting.

Address: 4300 Concession Road 5, Loretto, ON L0G 1L0. Some older directories list the farm as 4316 — same property, but punch in 4300 to be safe. If your GPS gets confused on the concession roads, call the farm at 705-434-0404.

💡 A Few Things Worth Knowing

🎟 Register first, drive second. The single most common way to ruin this day is to show up unregistered. It takes two minutes online.

👢 Closed shoes you don’t love. Barnyards are barnyards, and this runs rain or shine. Leave the white sneakers at home and skip open-toed sandals for the kids.

🥪 Don’t pack a picnic. Outside food and drink aren’t allowed. Come hungry instead and work through the dairy samples and the farm store.

🧴 Sunscreen and hats. A lot of the day is out in the open, in a field, in July. There’s not much shade to hide in.

🛒 Budget for the farm store. The store is open and stocked with milk, yogurt, farm beef, preserves and Ontario cheese. Bring a cooler bag for the drive home — this is the whole reason people come back.

Free, But Spots Are Limited 🐄

A Day on the Farm has grown every year since the den Haans started it, and registration is the only way in. Nearly 800 guests are already booked. Grab your spots and get the date in the calendar.

❓ Common Questions