Upper Valley Connections

Issue No. 23 · September 10, 2026

Corn maze season is underway around the Valley, and this week we found out the mazes themselves have a story worth telling. Plus a full weekend of fall community events -- an apple pie bake-off, a car show, a bluegrass night at Cedar Circle Farm -- and Tunbridge World's Fair opens next Thursday to close things out.

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SILO Distillery in Windsor hosts Bottles & Botanicals: Dahlias tonight -- cocktail demonstrations paired with a build-your-own dahlia bouquet, 6-7:30pm, $50. And Fairlee Town Hall has a free 30th-anniversary screening of "Man with a Plan," the 1996 Vermont-made mock documentary starring Tunbridge farmer Fred Tuttle -- who two years later actually won the 1998 Vermont Republican Senate primary as a publicity stunt for the film. Filmmaker John O'Brien will be there for a Q&A, 7pm.

This week's highlights include a folk fest at First Congregational Church of Lebanon, an apple pie bake-off in Hartford, a car show in White River Junction, and a bluegrass night at Cedar Circle Farm -- plus Tunbridge World's Fair opens next Thursday.

Farmers’ Markets

Hartland's market wrapped up for the season last week. Lebanon, Norwich, Mt Tom, Canaan, Honey Field Farm, West Hartford Library, and Market on the Green in Woodstock are all still running, and Royalton Farmers Market in South Royalton is new to our roundup this week.

Written in Corn

Corn maze season has started around the Valley, and if you've only ever thought of a corn maze as a maze, Riverview Farm in Plainfield will change your mind. Every summer, an artist writes, designs, and hand-paints an entirely new maze there -- a real story, with real characters, worked into the corn itself.

For several recent years that artist was Emily Zea, who built a different themed maze annually: apples in 2019 (visitors hunted for fifteen hidden apples, each linked by QR code to a use for that variety), later New England monsters and folklore. This year, Riverview has a new maze designer taking over, building an entirely new cast of hand-painted characters around a story centered on cryptids. It's less a puzzle than a piece of rotating community folk art that happens to be walkable. Riverview also runs a haunted version of the maze the weekend of Halloween, which doubles as a fundraiser for the Lebanon High and Middle School Nordic ski teams -- all proceeds go directly to the programs.

Down the road in Lebanon, Patch Orchards' maze has its own reputation -- regularly named among the state's most difficult.

If a maze that isn't made of corn appeals more, Path of Life Sculpture Garden in Windsor has a hedge maze open year-round, dawn to dusk. And if you find yourself in Windsor's Artisans Park anyway, SILO Distillery next door is hosting tonight's Bottles & Botanicals event -- cocktail demos and a build-your-own dahlia bouquet.

For a longer drive, three more are worth knowing about. The Great Vermont Corn Maze in Danville is the largest in Vermont and in New England, at roughly 24 to 26 acres, with an indoor blacklight maze and 100 feet of bridges built in. Beech Hill Farm in Hopkinton, NH runs two distinct mazes each year -- this year, one themed around America's 250th anniversary and a second built as an animal-tracking challenge using a bingo card of local wildlife tracks. And Collins Farm in Bath, NH, which markets itself as the state's top corn maze, redesigns its 13-acre maze annually with three difficulty tiers to choose from.

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