Weston's Fall Doesn't Shut Down All at Once. It Closes in Stages.

The gravel lot behind Lachat Town Farm's Carriage Barn held its last food truck line of the season on Friday, September 25. By Saturday morning the tables were folded, the string lights were down, and the field where neighbors had been picking up sourdough from Baked in Weston and scoops from Momu for three months sat empty. A few miles away on Pent Road, the gate at Devil's Den Preserve stood open the way it does every day right now, no signs, no closures, nothing different about this particular weekend than any other in early fall.

That gap is the point. It's easy to think of Weston's fall as one motion, the markets end, the trails quiet down, the whole town settles into its off-season posture together. It doesn't work that way here. The farm's outdoor calendar just wrapped for the year. The preserve's only seasonal closure hasn't started and won't for another six or seven weeks. Two Weston institutions, two schedules, and they never touch.

What Actually Ended at Lachat

Lachat Town Farm runs its markets from June through September, on the last Friday of each month, 4 to 8 pm. The September 25 date wasn't a random closure. It was the calendar doing exactly what it's built to do, closing out the fourth and final market of the season. The next fixed date on the farm's public calendar is the Winter Market in December, built around holiday shopping rather than produce.

What doesn't stop is everything else Lachat runs. The Watercolor & Landscape course meets Mondays from September 28 through November 23, ten to noon. Yoga and Meditation continues on Saturday mornings. Tai Chi holds its slot the second and fourth Saturday of the month. The Knitting Circle keeps its third Wednesday spot through fall and into winter. None of that follows the market's June-to-September arc. It runs on its own schedule, mostly indoors, mostly untouched by harvest timing or weather.

The farm also held its Autumn Equinox Fire Ceremony on September 22, a few days ahead of the final market, a one-time event rather than a recurring one. Miss both and the next fixed date on Lachat's calendar is December.

What Hasn't Started at Devil's Den

The other half of Weston's fall calendar belongs to Lucius Pond Ordway/Devil's Den Preserve, a roughly 1,700-acre Nature Conservancy property that straddles the Weston-Redding line. Every fall since 2001, the Conservancy has run a controlled deer hunt inside the preserve, closing it to the public on a scattered set of weekdays timed to the state's firearms season. Past announcements have described the arrangement plainly:

"TNC is working with experienced hunters with knowledge of the preserve and local area who will work only in select areas of the preserve's interior away from any neighboring properties."

Last year's closure ran November 19 and 20, then 24 through 26, then December 1 through 4, then December 8 and 9, eleven days total spread across roughly three weeks. The pattern repeats every year, but the exact dates move, and the Conservancy typically doesn't publish the new schedule until late October or early November. As of this writing, the 2026 dates haven't been announced.

The Rule People Get Wrong

The detail that trips up longtime residents isn't that Devil's Den closes. It's assuming the closure covers a season instead of a set of specific days. Year after year, the closure has landed only on weekdays, never a Saturday or Sunday. Someone who avoids the preserve on a random weekend in November because it's "hunting season" is skipping days when the trails are fully open. Someone who shows up on a Tuesday inside the closure window without checking for posted signage is the one who actually gets turned away.

Here's how the two calendars line up against each other this year:

Read across the rows and the mismatch is obvious. October, arguably the best month to be outside in Weston, is the one stretch where neither calendar has anything scheduled or closed. The farm has gone quiet on markets. The preserve hasn't gone quiet at all.

Why the Order Matters More Than the Dates

Neither schedule is arbitrary, and each is built around a different kind of need. Lachat's market calendar tracks growing seasons and volunteer staffing, so it winds down when the produce and the Friday night crowd both thin out. Devil's Den's closure tracks a wildlife management need. The Conservancy has pointed to deer overbrowsing and its effect on forest regeneration as the reason the hunt happens at all, so it only starts once the state's firearms season opens, regardless of what the farm's calendar is doing.

Because the two run on unrelated logic, they never overlap in a way that would let anyone treat "Weston fall" as a single block of time. The five or six weeks between Lachat's last market and Devil's Den's first closure are the one stretch where nothing town-wide is starting or ending, just the ongoing indoor programs at the farm and full open access at the preserve.

A few minutes down Good Hill Road, the Norfield Grange runs its own winter farmers market on a schedule separate from Lachat's, another example of the same pattern. Weston's public calendar isn't one town-wide season. It's several smaller ones that happen to share a zip code.

Anyone planning a weekend at Devil's Den before the hunt closures start has, right now through most of October, the most open the preserve gets all year. Anyone hoping to catch Lachat's Watercolor & Landscape course still has time, since it runs through November 23, well past the market's close. And anyone planning a Tuesday hike in late November should still check for posted signs at the preserve entrance, since the Conservancy hasn't set this year's dates yet.

Weston's calendar rewards paying attention to it, one Friday market at a time, one preserve reopening at a time. M & D Properties tracks these local rhythms the same way we track everything else about this town, because knowing what's actually open, and when, is part of knowing the place.