Last September, a small crowd gathered around the stage on Main Street to watch something Meredith hadn't done in 75 years: throw itself an Old Home Day. Actors from the Winnipesaukee Playhouse performed a short skit built around the work of Bob Montana, the Archie Comics creator who lived here and died in 1975 after a heart attack while cross-country skiing nearby. Down the block, kids ran a scavenger hunt. Over at the First Baptist Church, there was an egg toss. Near the stage, a pie-eating contest drew the loudest crowd of the day.
That was the town's first Old Home Day since 1950, held on Saturday, September 6. This year it comes back for round two on Saturday, September 19, 2026, and that shift matters more than it looks. Last fall, Moulton Farm's corn maze and pumpkin patch opened on Quarry Road on September 19, two weeks after Old Home Day had already happened. This year, because the committee moved the date, the two could land on the exact same Saturday for the first time, not because anyone planned it that way, but because a brand-new tradition is still finding its footing while a farm that's been running since the 1890s keeps doing what it always does.
A Tradition That Skipped Three Generations
Meredith's Old Home Day isn't an old chestnut the town has been running every fall since your grandparents were kids. It's the opposite. The town went 75 years without one, and the committee that brought it back last September built the revival partly as a tribute to Bob Montana, whose death fifty years earlier gave the timing an extra layer of meaning. The Winnipesaukee Playhouse skit wasn't filler between the parade and the pie contest. It was the point.
Andrew Eaton, who owns Art of Turning and served on the Old Home Day committee, framed the whole idea around timing: once the summer visitors thin out, a town benefits from a day built for the people who live there year-round. That's a useful way to think about Old Home Day generally. It isn't competing with the Lakes Region Fine Arts and Crafts Festival for tourist foot traffic in August, and it isn't trying to be the parade-and-fireworks version other Lakes Region towns run in late summer. It's Meredith's own version, scheduled specifically for the lull after Labor Day, when Main Street belongs to residents again.
The Date Already Moved Once
Here's the detail worth knowing if you're planning around it: last year's Old Home Day happened on Saturday, September 6, 2025. This year, the official event page lists the date as Saturday, September 19, 2026, thirteen days later on the calendar. That's not a typo and it's not a rescheduling due to weather. It's simply a different date, which tells you something honest about where this tradition stands. A festival with 46 years behind it, like the Lakes Region Fine Arts and Crafts Festival, has settled into a fixed August weekend that businesses and residents plan around without thinking twice. Old Home Day, two years in, hasn't settled into a groove yet. The committee is still finding the date that works.
That matters for anyone hosting family that weekend or trying to time a Main Street visit around the parade. Check the current schedule before you build a Saturday around it, because there's no guarantee September 19 becomes the permanent slot next year either.
Why September 19 Also Points You Toward Quarry Road
The more interesting detail is what else has landed on September 19 before. Moulton Farm, which has been actively growing food on the same land since the 1890s, opened its corn maze and pumpkin patch for the 2025 season on September 19, running through November 2. One maze runs full-sized across four acres. The other is sized for younger kids, with corn kept to about four feet so parents can see over it. Both open alongside wagon rides, live music most weekends, and the Cider Bellies Doughnut stand, which has developed enough of a following that people have been known to make U-turns off Route 25 for the smell alone.
Farms don't run their opening dates past a town committee, so there's no guarantee Moulton Farm opens on September 19 again this year. But if last year's pattern holds, Meredith residents get an unusually clean Saturday: a town tradition still finding its permanent date, landing by coincidence on the same day a harvest season older than the town's electric grid gets underway.
How the Day Actually Breaks Down
If you want to treat September 19 as a full day rather than picking one event, here's a sequence that respects both the downtown footprint and the drive out to the farm:
- Morning on Main Street. Last year's egg toss ran at 11 a.m. at the First Baptist Church, ahead of the parade. Worth arriving early if that pattern repeats.
- Midday at the stage. Last year's noon slot featured Winnipesaukee Playhouse actors performing a piece tied to Bob Montana's work, followed by a pie-eating contest near the stage around 1 p.m.
- Lunch downtown before you drive out. Giuseppe's Pizzeria in Mill Falls Marketplace or Town Docks are both an easy walk from the stage if you want to eat before heading to the farm.
- Afternoon on Quarry Road. Give yourself at least ninety minutes if you're doing both mazes with kids, plus time for the pumpkin patch and a stop at the doughnut stand.
- Evening back in town, if you have energy left. Hermit Woods Winery & Eatery runs a quieter room if you want to end the day somewhere that isn't running on kid-festival energy.
None of this requires choosing one event over the other. The geography works in your favor: Moulton Farm sits on Route 25 between Meredith and Center Harbor, close enough that the drive from Main Street doesn't eat into your afternoon.
The Part Worth Remembering for Next Year
The reason this is worth writing down isn't just that two fun things happen on the same day. It's that the two things run on completely different clocks, and this year those clocks happen to agree. Moulton Farm's opening date follows the corn, the frost line, and decades of harvest patterns that don't care what the town calendar says. Old Home Day follows a two-year-old committee that already moved its own date by two weeks once and may move it again.
That's not a criticism of the new tradition. Every long-running local institution started exactly like this, unsettled and finding its footing, before it became the kind of fixture nobody questions. But if you're a Meredith resident who wants to build a real weekend around both events, don't assume the third Saturday in September is now locked in. Check the Old Home Day page each year, and treat this September's overlap as a bonus rather than a permanent feature of the fall calendar.
For now, mark September 19, 2026 down, plan the drive from Main Street to Quarry Road, and enjoy a Saturday that pairs a brand-new town tradition with one of the oldest working farms in the Lakes Region.
If you're a Meredith homeowner curious what a fall like this one does for your property's standing in the neighborhood, or you're weighing a move here and want someone who actually knows which Saturday to circle on the calendar, Ana Freitas at HomesByAnaRealtor is a phone call or a quick instant home valuation away.
