After October 10, Germantown's Fall Moves Indoors and Up the Orchard Roads

"It's where neighbors run into each other, where kids stop after school for their favorite snack, and where the town's daily life happens." Jeremy Laurange, Hawthorne Valley's director of retail, said that about Otto's Market at 215 Main Street. Rural Intelligence published the quote on October 5, the week after Hawthorne Valley announced it would take over the store, keep the Otto's name and keep its staff.

The timing matters. This Saturday, October 10, is the last day of the Germantown Farmers Market's 2026 season, which opened May 23 at the Palatine Park Pavilion. After that, the outdoor Saturday is over until spring. For the next six weeks, fall in Germantown and Livingston happens in places with walls and reservation lists, along the orchard roads, and in the one Main Street storefront that has just made plans to stay as it is.

Saturday, October 10, From Morning to Night

Almost every outdoor event left on the local calendar falls on this one Saturday. In order:

1. 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The final 2026 Saturday of the Germantown Farmers Market at the Palatine Park Pavilion, 50 Palatine Park Road. The Town calendar lists a wider 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. window for the pavilion, but the market's own hours are 10 to 1.
2. 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Spooky Season Crafty Kids Story Hour at Clermont State Historic Site. It's free, and reservations are encouraged.
3. 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The free Hawthorne Valley Harvest Festival, a short drive away in Ghent. New this year are an 11 a.m. walk on the biodiversity trail and a 1 p.m. Creature Parade.
4. 5 to 9:30 p.m. The Germantown Park Commission's Haunted Hayrides, one night only. Each 30-minute tractor-drawn ride passes a dozen scenes with costumed actors. Tickets are $10 in advance or at the door.

The hayrides have added two things this year. The first is a haunted house, with one visit included in the hayride ticket or $5 at the door for anyone not riding. The second is a free activity center with face painting and a coloring station. From 5 to 7 p.m., the Larch Hill Farm Belgian horses give free ten-minute wagon rides as availability allows. Food trucks round out the evening.

The festival and the market overlap by a couple of hours, and Hawthorne Valley is at the center of that overlap. The Ghent farm that runs the Harvest Festival is the same organization now taking on Otto's. Its farm store started as an honor-system stand on the Ghent campus more than 50 years ago. It now works with a network of more than 200 regional farms, growers and makers, and that network is the infrastructure it plans to bring to the Germantown storefront.

The Evening Calendar That Takes Over

From the next weekend on, the calendar moves to evenings and indoor spaces. The dates come from Clermont, the Germantown Library and Tousey NY, and most need a reservation or a ticket bought ahead.

Clermont runs most of the rest of the season. It has the story hour on October 10, two weekends of candlelit ghost tours, a November geology walk and a birthday celebration that runs all day on the 14th. The birthday is also when Clermont launches The Clermont Dispatch, a new publication of its own. The ghost tours need the most planning. State Parks lists them as reservation-only with no walk-ins, so a Friday or Saturday slot should be booked before the market closes, not after.

The Midwood open house is the smallest event on the list. It runs for two hours on a Wednesday afternoon and requires a reservation, at $50 for Friends of Clermont members and $75 for everyone else. Midwood is a historic Germantown house, and this ticket is the way in.

Last year's Turkey Walk was billed as a "First Annual" event on November 29, 2025. It isn't on the Town's November 2026 calendar as of early October. What is on that calendar is a Waterfront Advisory Committee meeting on November 2 and an LWRP Committee meeting on November 9.

Livingston's Orchards Carry the Outdoor Season Longer

Germantown's outdoor events finish on October 10. Livingston's working farms keep going past that date, and three of them sit close together.

Hopedale Farm, at 15 Klibar Road in Livingston, has been family-owned since 1916. It opened for the 2026 apple season on Labor Day weekend. Varieties come in as they ripen, so the selection changes from week to week. Bring your own bags or use the farm's.

Fix Brothers Fruit Farm was established in 1899 and is run by the fifth generation of the family. Pick-your-own began September 16 and is open Wednesday through Sunday. Apples are the main fruit in September and October, and pears are generally available alongside them. The Apple Barn sells local cider, jams and pumpkins and runs hayrides on weekends. That gives the area a second, daytime hayride after the Park Commission's one-night version is over. Columbia County Tourism lists the farm under Livingston, at 215 White Birch Road, Hudson.

Smith Farms is a few hundred numbers down the same road, at 200 White Birch Road, and is also listed under Livingston. Its apples include Gala, Honeycrisp, Fuji, Royal Cortland, Macoun, Jonagold and Golden Delicious. The farm updates its picking schedule through the season, so check what's available before driving out.

Weather and growing conditions decide how long picking lasts, so treat these as dates to confirm, not guarantees. Still, the farms give Livingston a stretch of outdoor fall that keeps going after the Palatine Park pavilion has closed for the year.

Main Street, Where the Year-Round Places Are

When the market tents come down, Main Street is where most of the year-round activity is, and this month's news secures one of its main storefronts.

The building at 215 Main Street opened as Central Market in 1927. It ran under that name for about seven decades, then stood empty for a few years. Otto Leuschel renovated it and reopened it as Otto's Market in 2008, and new owners, including Noah Bernamoff and Rae Cohen, took over in 2017 and kept the name. Hawthorne Valley's stewardship is the third ownership change in less than two decades, and it comes ahead of the building's centennial in 2027. Hawthorne Valley has said it will keep the Otto's name and the existing staff and will hire locally. The transition is expected to continue through 2027, with Hawthorne Valley's purchasing network added gradually. No specific reopening date has been announced.

Laurange described the goal as continuity. "We're growing into Germantown not to replace Otto's legacy," he said, "but to carry it forward."

Two dining options opened in 2026 and are now in their first late fall. Nines opened in April in the former Gaskins space and serves dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. every night except Thursday. On Route 9, Tousey NY opened July 26 in the space where Tousey Winery operated until the end of 2025. It's open from noon to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, with Sunday brunch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Between Nines' Friday-through-Wednesday schedule and Tousey NY's Thursday-through-Sunday hours, at least one of the two is open for a sit-down meal every day of the week.

That's the fall in Germantown and Livingston after October 10. Saturday morning at the market gives way to Clermont's evenings and reserved afternoons, the Livingston orchards keep picking open while the trees last, and Otto's carries on under a steward that has committed to its name, its staff and its centennial.

Owning a home in Germantown or Livingston means knowing which dates sell out and which storefronts will still be there next spring. Paula Redmond has followed these towns for four decades. If you're thinking about what your property is worth in this market, she would be glad to start with a Confidential Home Valuation.