Drive through Milford and you can point to Main Street. Amherst has a village green ringed by shops. Hollis has an intersection. Route 122, Route 111, and Route 130 meet near the town common, and that junction is about as close as this town gets to a downtown drag.
If you want to understand what actually organizes daily life here between now and fall, stop looking for a commercial strip and start watching three institutions instead: a farm that has been in the same family since 1847, a land trust founded in 1964, and a town tradition older than the automobile. Each one usually runs on its own separate calendar. Right now, in the six weeks between today and Old Home Days weekend on September 18 and 19, all three are overlapping in ways worth knowing about if you actually live here, rather than just visit.
Beaver Brook Is Mid-Renovation, Not Just Mid-Season
Most people who walk Beaver Brook Association's trails think of it as a quiet buffer of forest and wetland behind Ridge Road. It protects over 2,200 acres and maintains 35 miles of trails that stay open, free, from dawn to dusk every day of the year, drawing more than 15,000 visitors annually. It was started in 1964 by cousins Hollis Nichols and Jeff Smith with a single 12-acre parcel, which makes the current moment a genuinely bigger deal than a typical trail closure sign would suggest.
The organization is partway through the largest capital project in its history: a $7.1 million plan to renovate its Maple Hill campus and build a new environmental education center. Phase one alone runs $4.1 million, and as of last fall the campaign had raised $2.3 million toward it, with construction timed so the new building would be ready for the 2026 program season.
"We need our community to drive this project," Beaver Brook's Kellner told the Hollis-Brookline Rotary Club last September.
Visit this month and you'll see the project in an in-between state. Parking has reopened with a new one-way traffic pattern. Cow Lane and the Accessible and Wildflower Trails are back open. The Sassafras trail, sometimes called the Story Book trail, is closed for hydroseeding and general maintenance. If the loop you remember from last summer isn't quite the loop you'll walk this weekend, that's why.
The organization's other quiet project is at its Brown Lane Barn campus, where staff have revitalized a home built in the 1700s into a working educational homestead with gardens, livestock, and a food forest developed in partnership with Nashua's Regenerative Roots. Resident educator Ali Farquhar, who grew up in Hollis, manages the site and lives on the property.
Two of the calendar items tied to all this are live right now, not someday. Beaver Brook is actively recruiting makers, artisans, and local producers for its Fall Festival Marketplace on the newly renovated Maple Hill grounds, and fall class registration opened back on July 13. If you make or grow something in Hollis, this is the window to act on it.
Brookdale Is Already Past Peach Season
Brookdale Fruit Farm has operated at 41 Broad Street under the same family since 1847. The pick-your-own entrance sits directly across the street from the farm stand, and between the two sides of Broad Street the farm grows more than 50 varieties across apples, peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, cherries, raspberries, and blueberries. One visitor summed up the apple side of that on Yelp: "Brookdale Farm has a wonderful variety of fruit, including 19 different kinds of apples."
By mid-August the stone fruit is winding down and the farm is shifting into fall pick-your-own, which at Brookdale means more than apples. The list includes sugar pumpkins, mini pumpkins, Ironsides (cannonball) pumpkins, acorn squash, blue hubbard squash, butternut squash, and gourds in various sizes. Retail hours run daily, 8am to 6pm, May through December, so there's no need to plan around a narrow weekend window the way you might for a smaller orchard.
Old Home Days Turns The Corner From Summer To Harvest
Old Home Days was established in 1899 by Governor Frank West Rollins, and every September since, Hollis has marked the tradition with artisans, amusements, and entertainment for the whole family. The 2026 celebration runs Friday and Saturday, September 18 and 19, at Nichols Field and the adjacent Lawrence Barn on Depot Road, with no admission fee. The parade, which anchors the weekend, features antique cars, firetrucks, community groups, tractors, and pets.
Nichols Field already had a dress rehearsal for crowds this summer. On August 4, the Hollis Police Department, Fire Department, DPW, and Social Library hosted National Night Out at the same field, running a cookout and touch-a-truck event from 4 to 8pm. It's a smaller gathering, but it uses the same ground Old Home Days will fill six weeks later, which makes it a useful preview of how the field handles a crowd before the bigger weekend arrives.
Where To Eat While You Wait For The Parade
None of this happens on an empty stomach, and Hollis's food options cluster in a few specific spots rather than spreading across a commercial corridor.
- Hollis Country Kitchen on Proctor Hill Road has been family-run for more than 30 years and runs regular Greek Night menus with pastitsio, moussaka, char-grilled Greek marinated lamb tips, open-faced gyros, and baklava for dessert.
- Buckley's Market & Cafe at 9 Market Place pairs a curated cafe counter with a full market: paninis, flatbread pizza, daily hot soup, prepared entrees and sides, plus a fresh meat and fish counter.
- Market Place Diner at 4 Market Place opens early and serves breakfast all day, including homemade corned beef hash and made-from-scratch soups and chowders. One regular described it plainly: "The place is always full and an obvious local favorite."
If you're headed out toward Route 122 anyway, the Silver Lake Flea Market and Antique Fair at 447 Silver Lake Road runs its full 2026 season from April through the first Sunday in November, so it overlaps comfortably with both apple season and Old Home Days weekend.
The Six Weeks That Matter
None of these four things (Beaver Brook, Brookdale, Old Home Days, the flea market) are new to Hollis. What's unusual is that this particular six-week window puts all of them in a state of visible motion at once. The trail system is reopening in pieces. The farm stand is trading peaches for pumpkins. A 127-year-old town tradition is a few weeks out. And the land trust that most people associate with quiet Sunday walks is asking its own neighbors to help finish a multi-million dollar building.
That's a different read on the town than "charming New England community with apple orchards and hiking trails," even though every fact in that sentence is technically true. The version that's actually happening on the ground right now has more moving parts, and most of them are worth checking on before September 19 arrives.
Rebecca Curran Realty keeps an eye on Hollis year-round, not just when a property comes up for sale. If a Hollis home you've had your eye on ever becomes relevant to your own plans, or you're simply curious what a property in town is worth in today's market, reach out anytime for an instant home valuation.
