Cherry season in Brentwood comes in hot and burns out fast. From early May through mid-June, Lone Tree Way fills with Bay Area families making the same pilgrimage east, and by 9 a.m. on a Saturday the access roads off Walnut Boulevard and Sellers Avenue are slow enough to cost your group an hour of prime picking time before anyone sets foot in an orchard. Coordinating four cars across a half-dozen farm stops, parking on narrow gravel turnouts, and figuring out who volunteers to skip the winery because they're driving home — none of that is the trip you planned.
Brentwood is just 10 miles east of Antioch, and a Brentwood party bus rental handles the whole loop: farms in the morning, vineyards in the afternoon, and one comfortable ride back when the baskets are full and the glasses are empty.
The Harvest Time in Brentwood network connects visitors to 65-plus growers selling direct to the consumer within roughly a four-mile radius of town. Strawberries kick off the season in May, cherries follow immediately, peaches and nectarines carry through summer, and pumpkins close out October. Add three estate wineries and Brentwood's own wine bar a few miles from the same orchard roads, and you have a full-day itinerary that runs from 8 a.m. to sunset without juggling five separate navigation apps and a parking plan at every stop.
The farms are the draw. The bus is what makes the day actually work.
Why Your Farm Group Needs One Bus, Not Five Cars
The access roads around Brentwood's farm corridor are rural two-laners that were not built for convoy-style group parking. During peak cherry and peach season, farms ask visitors to pull off onto designated gravel shoulders or dirt lots — fine for a few cars, genuinely messy for a caravan that arrives in waves and needs to leave on different schedules. Someone misses a turn off Balfour Road.
Someone parks at the wrong Nunn farm location (there are two). Someone decides they are done at 2 p.m. while the rest of the group wants the winery stop. One bus eliminates all of it: one parking footprint at each farm, one departure time, zero navigation disagreements, and nobody sitting out the Campos tasting room because they drew the short straw.
Antioch group transportation services through this website help you compare vehicle options built for multi-stop farm day trips like this. The route from the first orchard to the last pour is easy to map out before the bus ever leaves town. For groups mixing families with small kids and adults who want the full winery afternoon, a minibus keeps everyone together without splitting the party into the "sober car" and the "fun car."
That split is the whole problem this trip is designed to avoid.
Brentwood's Harvest Calendar: What's Growing and When
Brentwood's season runs March through October for direct-to-consumer produce, but the windows that draw the biggest group crowds are tight. Here is what to know before building your itinerary:
| Crop | Typical Season | Peak Window |
|---|---|---|
| Strawberries | May – June | Mother's Day weekend through late May |
| Cherries | Early May – mid-June | Mid-May through early June (weather-dependent) |
| Apricots | June | Short window — roughly two to three weeks only |
| Peaches & Nectarines | June – September | Late June through August |
| Corn, peppers, tomatoes | July – September | August through Labor Day |
| Pumpkins | September – October | First two weekends of October at peak |
Cherry season can arrive early in a warm year — in 2025 the first u-pick farms opened in late April. Check harvestforyou.com for a real-time farm status map the morning of your trip, since individual farms can close out a crop in two to three days of heavy picking. Saturday mornings in May and June are the busiest on the farm corridor by a significant margin — arriving at first open (typically 8 or 9 a.m.) gives your group the best selection and avoids the midday parking crunch along Walnut Boulevard.
U-Pick Farms on the Brentwood Farm Trail
Three Nunns Farm
Three Nunns Farm (550 Walnut Blvd, Brentwood, CA 94513 — (925) 550-0870) is one of the most recognizable names on the Brentwood farm trail, running cherry picking from mid-May through mid-June at $3.50 per pound. The farm keeps wagons on-site and has free parking — including a gravel lot with enough room that a minibus does not need to perform a seven-point turn on a shoulder. In the fall, the pumpkin patch and corn maze turn Three Nunns into the go-to October group outing for East Contra Costa families.
For groups building an itinerary around both cherry season and the fall harvest, this is the farm that anchors the route both times.
Nunn Better Farms
Nunn Better Farms operates two Brentwood locations: the main orchard at 2777 Sellers Ave, Brentwood, CA 94513 — (925) 634-2148 — and a second site at 5500 Balfour Rd. Cherries run $4.50 per pound with no entrance charge, and the farm has been running direct-to-consumer cherry sales for over 30 years. The Sellers Avenue orchard sits in the densest cluster of farm-trail stops in Brentwood, which is exactly why a 15- to 35-passenger minibus earns its keep here — your group hops between adjacent farm stops without anyone losing the carpool on a road they have never driven before.
Vornhagen Farms
Vornhagen Farms (11350 Byron Highway, Brentwood, CA 94513 — (925) 382-1812) is a 20-acre cherry operation with more than 4,000 trees across five varieties: Brooks, Coral Champagne, Lapin, White Rainier, and Tulare. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. during season. The Byron Highway address is farther east than the Walnut Boulevard and Sellers Avenue cluster, which means it is often less crowded on peak weekend mornings — and with five distinct cherry varieties in one stop, it is worth the extra few miles for groups that want variety alongside volume.
Call ahead to confirm the orchard is still open before routing the bus out there; cherry season closes fast when the weather runs warm.
Mike's U-Pick (Peaches & Nectarines)
Mike's U-Pick (3230 Concord Ave, Brentwood, CA 94513 — (925) 698-7459) runs peach and nectarine picking Wednesday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., from late June through summer. This is the farm that extends the Brentwood group day-trip season through August and into early September when the cherry farms are long closed — and the Concord Avenue location is an easy add to any itinerary running east out of Antioch. The farm opens for only a few weeks each season, so confirm current availability at mikesupick.com before building your group trip around a peach-picking date.
Wineries to Round Out the Day
The same agricultural corridor that produces Brentwood's cherries also sits on soil that has built a quiet reputation for estate wine, particularly Zinfandel, Syrah, and other warm-weather varieties suited to the East Contra Costa valley. Pair a morning on the farm trail with an afternoon at a tasting room and you have a full-day itinerary that needs exactly one vehicle and zero sober-volunteer arguments. This is precisely the format an Antioch winery tour bus rental is built for.
Hannah Nicole Vineyards
Hannah Nicole Vineyards (6700 Balfour Rd, Brentwood, CA 94513 — (925) 392-3189) is Brentwood's largest estate winery — an 18,000-square-foot facility with an indoor tasting room and event center completed in 2009, open daily from noon to 5 p.m. (last tasting at 4:30 p.m., final pour at 4:45 p.m.). Two forty-acre parcels off Balfour Road supply 100% estate-grown grapes.
Groups of eight or fewer need no reservation, which covers most party bus and minibus groups arriving off a morning in the orchards. The Balfour Road address puts it within a mile of the Berry Best farm stand cluster, making it the logical first winery stop after the cherry-picking leg of the trip.
Campos Family Vineyards
Campos Family Vineyards (3501 Byer Rd, Byron, CA 94514 — (925) 308-7963) sits on 44 acres with a 37-acre estate vineyard, a remodeled event center, bocce ball court, and tasting room open Friday 1 to 5 p.m., Saturday noon to 5 p.m., and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m. The Byron location is a few miles southeast of the main Brentwood farm corridor and works cleanly into a circular route — farms on the inbound leg, Campos on the way back toward Antioch. Groups planning a mid-week farm day should note that Campos is closed Monday through Thursday; weekend-only availability means this stop works for Saturday and Sunday itineraries only.
Brentwood's Co. Co. County Wine Company
Brentwood's Co. Co. County Wine Company (633 1st St, Brentwood, CA 94513 — (925) 634-9463) is Brentwood's first wine bar — wines by the glass or bottle, live music every Friday and Saturday night. Hours are Wednesday and Thursday 4 to 9 p.m., Friday 4 to 11 p.m., and Saturday 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. For a Saturday trip that ends in town rather than at a rural vineyard, Co.Co. is the natural last stop.
Downtown Brentwood gives the bus a clean curbside pickup on 1st Street and keeps everyone off the farm access roads after dark. The wide Saturday hours — opening at 8 a.m. — also make it a viable morning coffee-and-catch-up start before heading out to the orchards.
Getting from Antioch to Brentwood
The drive runs about 10 miles from central Antioch to the heart of the Brentwood farm corridor — roughly 14 minutes in normal traffic heading east on Lone Tree Way toward Brentwood Boulevard. On peak farm weekends in May and June, add 10 to 20 minutes once the bus enters the farm access roads along Walnut Boulevard and Sellers Avenue as Saturday-morning traffic stacks up. The bus handles that stretch better than five separate cars stuck at different turnoff points in the queue.
For groups starting further west — Concord, Walnut Creek, or Pittsburg — the same Lone Tree Way approach adds another 20 to 30 minutes but feeds the farm corridor identically. A bus running a multi-city pickup loop through Antioch consolidates the entire group before the first farm stop, so no one arrives separately and no one waits in the orchard parking lot for the second car to show up.
A Sample Group Day-Trip Itinerary
As an example, here is what a Saturday cherry-and-wine day trip from Antioch could look like with one bus:
- 8:00 a.m. — Pickup in Antioch
- 8:20 a.m. — Nunn Better Farms (2777 Sellers Ave) for cherry picking; bus stages on the farm lot
- 9:30 a.m. — Short hop to Three Nunns Farm (550 Walnut Blvd) for a second cherry variety and the wagons
- 11:00 a.m. — Vornhagen Farms (11350 Byron Highway) for White Rainier and Coral Champagne cherries
- 12:30 p.m. — Lunch at a Brentwood farm stand or downtown
- 2:00 p.m. — Hannah Nicole Vineyards (6700 Balfour Rd) for tasting; bus stages in the vineyard lot
- 4:30 p.m. — Final stop at Co.Co. County Wine Company (633 1st St) for a glass and the live music warmup
- 6:30 p.m. — Return to Antioch, baskets full, no one has to drive
A trip this shape runs roughly 9 to 10 hours door-to-door. Build the bus quote around that block of time and the per-person number splits down fast once you clear 15 people. It is the same principle as any group outing: one flat rate divided by more heads is almost always the better deal once the car-and-parking math stacks up.
What Size Bus Fits a Farm Day Trip?
Most Brentwood farm group trips run between 15 and 35 people — large enough to need a bus, compact enough that a full-size motorcoach is more vehicle than the itinerary requires. A mid-size minibus navigates rural access roads more easily than a 56-passenger charter bus, fits in standard farm gravel lots, and keeps the per-person rate competitive when you are not filling every seat. For groups that run larger — a company outing, a multi-family reunion, or a bachelorette group that grew — a 40- to 56-passenger charter bus handles the headcount with undercarriage storage deep enough for buckets, produce crates, and the cases your group buys at the winery.
Browse the full range of vehicle options to match your headcount to the right option before requesting estimates.
Planning Your Budget (Example Ranges Only)
As an example — idea-stage ranges, not quotes or current market data — a 15- to 35-passenger minibus for a full-day Brentwood farm-and-winery trip from Antioch might run roughly $150 to $350 per hour all-inclusive, with a 9- to 10-hour total falling somewhere in the $1,350 to $3,500 range depending on vehicle size and date. Split across 20 people, that lands around $68 to $175 per person — on top of picking costs at the farms, and with the transportation headache, the parking scramble across six stops, and the sober-volunteer problem completely off the table. Check the Antioch party bus prices page for current planning ranges, or call 925-445-0250 any time for a free, no-obligation estimate.
Tips for a Smooth Group Farm Visit
- Arrive at first open on weekends. Farm traffic on Walnut Boulevard and Sellers Avenue builds by 10 a.m. on Saturdays in May and June. Arriving at the first farm when it opens — typically 8 or 9 a.m. — gives your group the best fruit selection and avoids the midday access-road congestion.
- Check farm status the morning of your trip. Cherry season can close a crop in two to three days of heavy picking. Verify which farms are still running at harvestforyou.com before the bus rolls — the status map updates in real time during season.
- Call ahead for winery groups larger than eight. Hannah Nicole Vineyards accommodates walk-in groups of eight or fewer; larger parties should call (925) 392-3189 before arrival so the tasting room can prepare. Campos Family Vineyards is reservation-friendly for groups as well — (925) 308-7963.
- Bring your own picking containers for big hauls. Most farms supply bags or boxes on-site, but groups planning to fill large quantities often bring flat crates to stack cleanly in the bus's storage area without crushing the bottom layer.
- Set a pickup time, not a departure time. With variable picking speeds and multiple farm stops, agree on a firm bus pickup time at the last stop rather than trying to coordinate a departure from each individual farm as the group finishes.
- Weekday trips are quieter. Many Harvest Time farms are open during the week with the same u-pick access and far less competition for parking. If your group has schedule flexibility, a Tuesday or Wednesday trip in May runs faster and more relaxed than any Saturday.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far is Brentwood from Antioch?
About 10 miles — roughly 14 minutes in normal traffic via Lone Tree Way east toward Brentwood Boulevard. On peak cherry-season Saturdays in May and June, budget an extra 15 to 20 minutes once the bus enters the farm access roads off Walnut Boulevard and Sellers Avenue. The full Brentwood farm trail is concentrated within about a four-mile radius of town, so covering multiple stops in one morning does not require long transit gaps between farms.
Which farms are best for large groups?
Three Nunns Farm (550 Walnut Blvd, (925) 550-0870) and Nunn Better Farms (2777 Sellers Ave, (925) 634-2148) are the two most frequently cited for being able to handle larger visitor volumes — free parking, on-site wagons, and enough orchard acreage that a group of 20 to 30 does not strip a row clean in 20 minutes. Vornhagen Farms (11350 Byron Highway, (925) 382-1812) is worth adding for groups that want five distinct cherry varieties at one stop. For fall outings, Three Nunns' pumpkin patch and corn maze is the single most popular East Contra Costa group destination from September through mid-October.
Can a party bus or minibus park at Brentwood farms?
Most Brentwood u-pick farms have gravel lots and open-field parking sized for general visitor traffic, not specifically for oversized vehicles. Three Nunns Farm and Nunn Better Farms have enough lot space to accommodate a mid-size minibus comfortably. For larger vehicles, calling the farm directly before arrival — to confirm the best spot to stage — prevents any access-road surprises.
A 15- to 35-passenger minibus navigates the farm access roads and gravel turnouts more easily than a full-size 56-passenger charter bus, which is one reason it is the most popular vehicle for this particular day-trip format.
When is the best season for a Brentwood farm bus trip?
Cherry season — early May through mid-June — is Brentwood's signature agricultural draw and the most-requested window for group bus trips from Antioch. The peach and nectarine season running June through September is a close second for summer groups. Fall pumpkin season at Three Nunns in October is the third major group window.
The most current farm status for any date is at harvestforyou.com.
Can u-pick farms and winery tastings be combined in one day trip?
Yes — and this is one of the most popular formats for Brentwood group day trips from Antioch. Farms open at 8 or 9 a.m. and wineries open at noon or later, so a morning on the farm trail followed by afternoon tastings at Hannah Nicole Vineyards and a final stop at Co.Co. County Wine Company fills the day cleanly without any dead time between stops. Because the winery portion of the day involves alcohol, having one bus instead of multiple cars is specifically what makes this itinerary practical.
Every person in the group gets the full day.
Are these trips good for bachelorette groups and birthdays?
Farm-and-winery day trips are one of the most requested formats for bachelorette group transportation in Antioch. A morning of cherry picking followed by afternoon tastings runs significantly cheaper per head than a full Napa or San Francisco trip, and it is a far more original afternoon than another downtown bar crawl. For birthday groups that want the full party bus experience — LED lighting, built-in bar, a strong sound system — a 20- to 30-passenger party bus is the right pick for the winery leg of the day.
Compare options for private event transportation in Antioch when building your quote request.
How early should I book for cherry season weekends?
At least three to four weeks in advance for peak cherry-season Saturdays — the two weekends around Memorial Day see the heaviest demand for group transportation from Antioch to Brentwood. The right-size vehicles for farm day trips (minibuses and mid-size party buses) get reserved quickly when the cherry forecast goes public in late April. Outside of peak cherry season, two to three weeks of lead time is generally workable for most Brentwood trip formats.
Plan Your Brentwood Farm Day Trip
Brentwood farm season runs May through October, and the gap between "everyone had a great day" and "someone had to skip the winery because they drove" is exactly one bus. Whether your group is 15 people splitting a minibus for a cherry-picking Saturday or 35 people booking for a full company outing that ends at an estate vineyard, antiochpartybuscompany.com connects you to transportation providers serving Brentwood and all of East Contra Costa County. If your group enjoys East Bay wine country, the Livermore Valley Wine Country group bus guide covers that corridor in detail — and for a longer haul, the Napa and Sonoma wine tour guide from Antioch maps out the full North Bay route.
Call 925-445-0250 any time to request estimates, or use the quote form to compare vehicle options for your Brentwood date in minutes!
