Most Easton residents settle into a summer default: Silverman's on a Saturday when the kids need something to do, maybe a stop at Sport Hill on the way home from the transfer station. It works. It also leaves half the town's farms out of the rotation.
The better move is to treat August as a schedule, not a habit. One Saturday is the anchor. The other weekends have their own answers, and a few of them are quieter, cheaper, and closer to what you actually want to cook that week.
The one Saturday the map does the work for you
Put Saturday, August 9 on the calendar. That is the 16th Annual Easton Farm Tour, running 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with the Easton Garden Club potting up sunflowers with kids at the Samuel Staples Elementary pavilion. The event is hosted by Citizens for Easton, and the format has held steady for more than a decade: a free, self-guided tour of Easton farms and farm stands, with tickets picked up at the Samuel Staples pavilion the day of.
Two things make the tour worth building the weekend around instead of treating as a drop-in.
First, the map itself. In earlier years, the Samuel Staples pavilion has handed out maps outlining the participating farms and the day's schedule, with map-holders getting access to discounts and samples at the stops. That is the practical reason to start there rather than driving straight to a favorite stand. You get the day's route, and you get pricing you would not get on a normal Saturday.
Second, the roster. Past tours have included Aspetuck Valley Apple Barn, Blue Button Farm, Historic Bradley Hubbell House Farm, Gilbertie's Herb Farm, Sherwood Farm, Silverman's Farm, and Sport Hill Farm. If you have lived here for years and still have not been inside Sherwood Farm's barn or seen Blue Button's Pygora goats up close, this is the Saturday where the friction to try something new is at its lowest.
A few logistics worth knowing before you go:
- The pavilion sits at Samuel Staples Elementary, 515 Morehouse Road. Get there closer to 10 than to noon if you want the sunflower activity for younger kids.
- The tour is self-guided. You are not on a bus. Plan three or four stops, not eight.
- Sal Gilbertie of Gilberties Organics donates the sunflower seedlings, so that station tends to move fast on volume, not on line-standing.
Where the rotation actually lives the other twelve weekends
The tour is one day. The reason Easton earns its "living farmers market" framing, in Sport Hill's own phrasing, is that the stands run all summer with different strengths. Treating them as interchangeable is how you end up paying tourist prices for tomatoes.
| Farm | Address | Best window this summer | Why go |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sport Hill Farm | 596 Sport Hill Rd | Fri–Sun in season | Organic produce, eggs, dairy, curated market |
| Silverman's Farm | 451 Sport Hill Rd | Weekdays, late June–September | Pick-your-own berries and peaches before the fall apple crush |
| Blue Button Farm | Easton | May–October, by reservation | Small groups, kids' parties, goat woods walk |
| Sherwood Farm | 355 Sport Hill Rd | Seasonal daytime hours | Barn farmstand, quieter stop |
| Aspetuck Valley Apple Barn | Easton | Late summer through fall | Cider and apples once the season turns |
A few notes on how to read that table.
Sport Hill is the weekend anchor. The stand at 596 Sport Hill Road is open Friday 10 to 5 and Saturday and Sunday 10 to 4, closed Monday through Thursday. It was the first CSA in Easton, launched in 2005 through the Unquowa School in Fairfield, and Al and Patti Popp still run it. If you have not been inside in a season or two, the market has expanded past produce into pantry goods and local artisan products. It is also worth knowing that Sport Hill sells wholesale to restaurants around the state, including The Whelk in Westport. When you buy a bunch of chard here, you are buying from the same supply that the Saugatuck River corridor kitchens are buying from.
Silverman's is a weekday move in summer. The place has a reputation for fall crowds, and it earns it. But pick-your-own runs from late June through September and October, with raspberries, blueberries, and 25 varieties of apples. That means July and early August, on a Tuesday morning, are the quiet window. The market at 451 Sport Hill Road is open daily, and it is the same operation whether you show up on a Saturday behind twelve minivans or a Wednesday behind nobody.
Blue Button is the reservation stop. This is the one people skip because it does not fit the drive-by pattern. Reservations open in January, and the party season runs May through October, weather permitting. If you have small kids and are tired of the same rotation of birthday venues, the goat walk through the woods, a 0.6-mile trail with some rocks and a steep hill, no strollers, is a legitimate answer to the "what do we do this weekend" question.
Sherwood Farm is the quiet counterweight. The farmstand operates inside the barn at 355 Sport Hill Road. It does not do the volume Silverman's does. On a hot Saturday in August, that is a feature.
The weekday move most residents skip
Here is the local knowledge that does not show up on any tourist site: two of Easton's best-known operations are on the same road, less than half a mile apart. Silverman's is at 451 Sport Hill. Sport Hill Farm is at 596 Sport Hill. Sherwood Farm is at 355 Sport Hill. You can hit all three on a single ten-minute loop.
The catch is the days. Sport Hill's stand is closed Monday through Thursday. Silverman's is open every day. Sherwood keeps seasonal hours. So the rotation actually looks like this:
- Tuesday or Wednesday morning: Silverman's for pick-your-own and cider donuts, no crowds.
- Friday afternoon: Sport Hill for the weekend produce haul before the Saturday rush.
- Saturday: Farm Tour day on August 9, then Sherwood or one of the smaller stands the rest of the month.
- Sunday: Sport Hill again if you missed Friday, before the 4 p.m. close.
That is the schedule the residents who have been here twenty years already run without thinking about it. It is not a secret. It is just not written down anywhere.
Why this is worth taking seriously if you live here
Easton is unusual in Fairfield County, and August is when the unusual part becomes tangible. The town's own framing, repeated across the municipal site, is that it is home to more than twenty working farms, with over one third of its land forever preserved. That is not landscaping copy. It is the reason a stand at 596 Sport Hill Road can still be a working farm in 2026 and not a subdivision.
The other piece worth knowing: Easton was officially awarded the title Christmas Tree Capital of Connecticut in 2021, and in 2025 the Easton Agricultural Commission took over the campaign from the Easton Garden Club. That designation gets more attention in December, but the underlying reason is the summer. The tree farms are on the same land base, and the same families, that keep the produce stands running from June through October.
If you have lived here for a while, the practical read is this: the farm rotation is not a nostalgia exercise. It is a working supply chain that still functions because enough people show up on Tuesdays and Fridays, not just on the one Saturday a year when the map is free.
Plan the rest of the summer around August 9
Anchor the calendar on the Farm Tour. Fill in the weekends around it with a rotation instead of a default. If you get through August without setting foot in Blue Button or Sherwood, you have missed most of what makes living here different from living six miles south.
If your summer is looking less like a rotation and more like a countdown to a move, whether that is downsizing off a larger Easton parcel or coming into one from a smaller lot elsewhere in Fairfield County, the Kelly Higgins Team is happy to talk through timing, prep, and what the local market is actually doing this season. Reach out for a no-obligation consultation.
