Issuu

N E W E N G L A N D ’ S M AG A Z I N E

ESCAPE INTO

AUTUMN

N E W E NGL A N D.COM

Connecticut’s Leaf-Peeping Paradise

///

SEP TEMBER / OC TOBER 2026

Autumn’s Big Show in the White Mountains PLUS: Prize-Winning Recipes from New England Fall Fairs

2026-09-YankeeAd-spread-TBY_3.indd 1 Cv2-001_YK0926_BarnYard.indd 2

7/17/26 11:36 AM

BARN TOUR

Stake Your Claim AU T H E N T I C P O ST & B E A M B A R N S + A D U S Builders of Quality Barns & ADUs Since 1984 BARNYARD.COM

Cv2-001_YK0926_BarnYard.indd 1

1-800-628-2276

7/13/26 2:50 PM 7/17/26 11:36 AM

CONTENTS SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2026

features In Connecticut’s Litchfield County, autumn is the invitation—the rest is the surprise. By Ian Aldrich

72 /// The Apple Hunters

New England once grew thousands of apple varieties. Now a band of devoted detectives is racing against time to find the survivors. By Sara Anne Donnelly

80 /// State of Play

Two seasons in, Maine’s joyful bear hug of its first professional soccer team shows no sign of letting up. Photos by Mat Trogner 2 |

YK0926_FOB_TOC.indd 2

86 /// Conversations: Alice Hoffman

On seeing her best-selling novels adapted to the big screen, the power of fairy tales to get at hard truths, and why she thinks Nathaniel Hawthorne was both a feminist and a hunk. Interview by Kelly Horan

90 /// The Old Sugar Maple Deep in a Massachusetts forest, a story of time and fragility unfolds. By Tim Loftus

GABRIELA HERMAN

64 /// Head for the Hills

In its placid waters and along its woodsy shoreline, Lake Waramaug puts on a two-for-one color show in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills. Story, p. 64

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/21/26 12:19 PM

WASHINGTON Astoria

Pacific Ocean

Mount St. Helens

Kalama

Fort Clatsop

Portland

Snake Riv er

Clarkston

Richland

Stevenson Hood River

River umbia Col

The Dalles

Multnomah Falls Mt. Hood

Pendleton

Hells Canyon

Lewiston IDAHO

OREGON

Discover Your Inner Explorer

COLUMBIA & SNAKE RIVERS Follow Lewis and Clark’s epic 19th-century expedition along the Columbia and Snake Rivers aboard the newest ship in the region. Enjoy unique shore excursions, scenic landscapes, and talented onboard experts who bring history to life. Brand New American Encore in 2026  The World’s Newest and Most Modern Riverboat

L ARGEST STATEROOMS

AWARD-WINNING EXCURSIONS

REGIONAL CUISINE

Call today for your FREE Cruise Guide 2025

MAGAD_YNK_7.75x10.5_ISSUE_SEPOCT2026.indd 1 003_YK0926_AmericanCruise.indd 3

800-230-7029

AmericanCruiseLines.com

7/8/26 12:34 PM 7/17/26 11:40 AM

CONTENTS

departments 12

home

BEHIND THE SCENES

14 FIRST PERSON It’s a special thing to feel a mountain belongs to you, and you belong to it. By Christine Woodside

26 /// Totally Lit

How a century-old-plus lighthouse keeper’s cottage got a stylish update with the help of a local designer and a bit of star power. By Madeline Bilis For Rough & Tumble, good looks and luxe materials plus a dash of made-in-Maine pride equals bags worth coveting. By Alyssa Giacobbe

FIRST LIGHT At Winslow Homer’s coastal Maine studio, the painter shifts from famous figure into something more like a friend. By Madeline Bilis

food

UP CLOSE Whether tossed in sugar, glazed, or (gasp!) plain, New England’s cherished cider doughnuts owe a debt to the biggest of apples. By Amy Traverso

38 /// Blue-Ribbon Buffet

Agricultural fair champions share recipes with that sweet taste of victory. By Amy Traverso

112 HERE IN NEW ENGLAND A New Englander’s letter to his grandson. By Mel Allen

44 /// Weekends in the Kitchen Two dishes—one sweet and one savory—make delicious use of cornmeal, New England’s original grain. By Amy Traverso

travel

ADVERTISING RESOURCES Fall Gift Guide ..................... 62 Retirement Living ................ 94 Marketplace ........................ 109

ON THE COVER

50 /// Weekend Away

Deep in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, a traditional adventure hub is coaxing visitors to stay put and dive into its small-town appeal. By Katrina Farmer

58 /// Peak Experiences

Two Yankee experts map out a colorful to-do list for this year’s foliage season. By Kim Knox Beckius with Jim Salge

New Hampshire’s famed foliage drive, the Kancamagus Highway, curves around the Hancock Overlook in Lincoln. Photo by Chris Bennett

Yankee (ISSN 0044-0191). Bimonthly, Vol. 90 No. 5. Publication Office, Dublin, NH 03444-0520. Periodicals postage paid at Dublin, NH, and additional offices. Copyright 2026 by Yankee Publishing Incorporated; all rights reserved. Postmaster: Send address changes to Yankee, PO Box 37128, Boone, IA 50037-0128.

4 |

YK0926_FOB_TOC.indd 4

J A R E D K U Z I A ( H O M E ); J O S E P H K E L L E R & C AT R I N E K E LT Y ( F O O D); C A I T B O U R G A U LT ( T R AV E L )

32 /// Made in New England

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 9:42 AM

Acadia.

Stay somewhere that stays with you. With 7 unique Bar Harbor properties, find the perfect fit for your next Maine adventure.

W W W . C O M E T O A C A D I A . C O M

005_YK0926_WithamFamHotels.indd 5

7/17/26 11:42 AM

READY, SET, EXPLORE IN MASSACHUSETTS T

ake a leisurely drive to any tuckedaway corner of Massachusetts and you’re bound to stumble upon a hiddengem town—the sort of place that’s flush with culture and charm, yet still keeps a low, laid-back profile. Surprising? Not really: Such discoveries are a natural part of this state’s allure, thanks to its thriving communities and well-preserved histories. If you’re looking to discover a new-to-you

town, here are four to start with. They’re rich in arts and culture (think: galleries, concerts, museums), steeped in history, humming with festivals, and serving the kinds of food and drink worth traveling for.

PHOTOS: Fall Foliage Parade, North Adams (Nick Mantello); Mass MoCA, North Adams (Barry Winiker/courtesy of 1Berkshire); Boott Cotton Mills Museum, Lowell (NPS); Lighthouse Keeper’s Pantry, Yarmouth Port (courtesy photo); The Publick House Historic Inn, Sturbridge (Scott Erb & Donna Dufault) I N PA R T N E R S H I P W I T H YA N K E E

MA_Tourism_Adv_0926_Final.indd 6

7/16/26 11:09 AM

STURBRIDGE Treasures await in the small Central Massachusetts town of Sturbridge. Notably, it’s home to Old Sturbridge Village, a living museum that depicts rural New England in the 1830s; on any given visit, you can strike up a conversation with a costumed historian, whether that’s a potter, blacksmith, or weaver. Visit the weekend after Indigenous Peoples’ Day and you can enjoy Sturbridge Harvest Fest, when food, games, music, local vendors, and farm animals make the town common the liveliest spot around. No matter when you arrive, you can’t leave town without trying B.T.’s Smokehouse, widely hailed as the home of the region’s best barbecue. Here, pulled pork, beef brisket, smoked chicken, and pork ribs are complemented by Southern staples like collard greens and black-eyed peas. Nearby Rapscallion Pub, set in an 1800s barn, serves house-brewed craft beer alongside paninis, smoked wings, and other comfort food. If it’s a morning snack you’re after, opt for a muffin top and a banana bread latte on the patio of Sturbridge Coffee House, or head to The Bake Shoppe at The Publick House Historic Inn for pecan sweet rolls, a house specialty.

LOWELL Founded in the 1820s as America’s first planned industrial city, Lowell and its textile mills helped put Massachusetts’s Greater Merrimack Valley region at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. Dive into that history at Lowell National Historical Park, which encompasses several museums, mills, and walking tours. Most visitors make a beeline for the Boott Cotton Mills Museum to tour the weave room, lined with 80-plus historic working looms from the 1920s, but don’t pass up the National Streetcar Museum, where you can step aboard a restored trolley and get a sense of Lowell’s role in America’s transit history, too. For another perspective on the city’s rich textile traditions, stop in at the New England Quilt Museum just a few blocks away. In between museum visits, make time to try the top-notch eggs Benedict at the vintage diner car Four Sisters Owl Diner. For dinner, grab a table at Simply Khmer for a taste of Cambodian cuisine. And to round things out, pick up something sweet from Pizzelle, which crafts small-batch European baked goods, or Olympos Bakery, founded by Greek immigrants back in

MA_Tourism_Adv_0926_Final.indd 7

1915 and now in its fourth generation of family ownership.

NORTH ADAMS Situated in the far northwestern corner of the state, North Adams is easily one of the state’s most beloved arts and culture towns. That’s due in large part to Mass MoCA, the biggest contemporary art museum in the U.S., with over 250,000 square feet of gallery space. It’s also becoming a food-and-drink destination with offerings like Casita, which bills itself as “a love letter to Mexico” as it serves up queso fundido, tacos, chile rellenos, and more. Forager Distillery, at the repurposed mill Greylock Works, pours artisanal gins and rums made on-site. Then there’s Public Eat+Drink, a longtime local favorite for gourmet burgers, steak frites, and other gastropub fare in an airy, industrial-chic space. It makes sense that the North Adams food scene is flourishing: Visitors need fuel for shopping and gallery hopping, as well as for special events like First Fridays, when local businesses stay open late and downtown takes on the feel of a block party, and for the annual Fall Foliage Parade, which marches down Route 8 with floats and drum lines on the first Sunday in October.

YARMOUTH All across Cape Cod, there’s a lot to love—but for your next venture over the bridge to this fabled peninsula, consider parking yourself in the charming MidCape town of Yarmouth to do some local exploring. Start at Lighthouse Keeper’s Pantry, a café and gourmet food shop in Yarmouth Port, for one of their “Fluffy Seagull” lattes (inspired by fluffernutter sandwiches, they’re a bona fide social-media sensation). Then walk over to the Edward Gorey House, a museum dedicated to the delightfully macabre author and illustrator that’s set in his former home. Across the green, there’s the Captain Bangs Hallet House Museum, an 1840 manse brimming with antiques that the captain brought back from his travels to Asia, plus other fascinating remnants of Victorian life. For a lively jazz jam, look to the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in South Yarmouth. Inside the former bank, you’ll find live music performances as well as art galleries and classes ranging from pottery and drawing to cooking and gardening. And no visit to Yarmouth is complete without a dinner at the stylish Leonessa, which opened in 2023 as a celebration of Italian regional cuisine. Try any of the pastas—you won’t regret it.

FOR MORE MASSACHUSETTS TRAVEL INSPIRATION, GO TO: VISITMA.COM

7/16/26 11:10 AM

Connect with Yankee | @ Y A N K E E M A G A Z I N E

TRAVEL  New England’s Best Pumpkin Fests Celebrate the beloved icon of autumn with parades, smashing contests, and carved jack-o’-lanterns galore. newengland.com/best-pumpkin-festivals

LIVING

All the Joys of Autumn. . . Right to Your Inbox

Haunted Houses 101 It seems every town in New England has one—a spooky old Victorian. Learn how this architectural style became the official house of Halloween. newengland.com/victorian-house

LIMITED-EDITION NEWSLETTER! Stunning colors, festive

M I C H A E L D. W I L S O N (L E A F ); M I R A /A L A M Y (P U M P K I N F E S T I VA L ); DA R I N A KO P C O C K /S TO C KSY (P E A R S)

harvests, lively small-town celebrations—New England’s foliage season packs a lot into its short run. And so does our Fall Newsletter. Sign up now, and each week we’ll send you an up-to-date snapshot of this spectacular season, with exclusive foliage reports from Yankee expert Jim Salge that feature: ■ Inspirational fall destinations in every New England state ■ A color-coded map to find the region’s brightest displays ■ Delicious seasonal recipes & can’t-miss regional events

But hurry! Just as with fall foliage, you won’t want to miss a bit of this special newsletter before it ends. To sign up, scan the code at left or go to: newengland.com/fallnewsletter

FOOD  Peak Pear Season Brimming with flavor (and fiber), pears shine in both sweet and savory dishes. Discover your new favorite way to enjoy them with Yankee’s recipe roundup. newengland.com/pear-recipes SOCIAL

MEET YANKEE’S FOLIAGE EXPERT Join Jim Salge this September for a deep dive into fall in Yankee’s online master class, “Why the Leaves Change and Why Every Year Is Different.” For details and to register, go to: newengland.com/fallmasterclass

8 |

YK0926_FOB_Connect.indd 8

Follow Along Join us online at your favorite social communities, @yankeemagazine.

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/20/26 11:17 AM

Plymouth’s Hidden Giant

See Plymouth SeePlymouth.com National Monument to the Forefathers, the largest solid granite monument in the U.S., stands at 81 ft. tall and, if you look closely, you will see it’s currently home to an Osprey family. Town of PLYMOUTH

A THANKSGIVING PARADE CELEBRATING OUR NATION'S HISTORY SATURDAY- NOVEMBER 21st - 10am DOWNTOWN PLYMOUTH

Harbor views from every room Idyllic seaside village location Indoor heated pool Steps to downtown shops, restaurants, movies, marinas, spas and more

Perfectly “Scituated” halfway between Boston and Cape Cod www.usathanksgiving.com

7 Beaver Dam Road Scituate Harbor, MA 02066

InnAtScituate.com

View our live webcam of Scituate Harbor anytime! 7 Beaver Dam Road, Scituate Harbor, MA 02066 • 877-477-5550

877-477-5550

Yankee Sept Oct Final copy 2.indd 1

7/2/26 2:47 PM

009_YK0926_SeePlymouth.indd 9

7/17/26 11:48 AM

GRADY DAYS

SALES EVENT Exclusive Pricing

Freedom 415

010-011_YK09256_GradyWHite.indd 10

7/21/26 2:14 PM

Limited Time Learn more: gradywhite.com

010-011_YK09256_GradyWHite.indd 11

7/21/26 2:14 PM

Inside Yankee | B E H I N D T H E S C E N E S

Autumn Shine ast fall, I was meandering around Little Pond in northwest Connecticut when I looked down to discover a message inscribed on one of the boardwalk planks: Keep shining. Not that it was hard to: Tall grasses waved in the light breeze, berry bushes and sedges sparked with color, and migratory warblers gave the morning a soundtrack all its own. In the distance, a stand of maples glowed in red and orange, and for long, delightful stretches I felt as though I had the entire area to myself. Part of the much larger White Memorial Conservation Center, a tract of 4,000 pristine acres just beyond downtown Litchfield, the Little Pond walk was an early discovery during my reporting for this issue’s travel feature on Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills [p. 64]. Peaceful and rural but terrifically accessible, that walk was also emblematic of the region overall. During my travels, I was truly never far from a great cup of coffee or an exceptional bookstore, or even another beautiful stroll in nature. As a New Hampshire boy well versed in northern New

England’s autumn splendor, I found the Nutmeg State a reminder that not all fall adventures are about huffing it to the top of some mountain peak. The issue you hold in your hands reflects that, too. Yes, associate editor Katrina Farmer does go rock climbing on her autumn visit to North Conway, New Hampshire [p. 50]. But food editor Amy Traverso explores a more accessible side of fall—agricultural fairs—with a collection of blue-ribbon recipes [p. 38], and writer Sara Anne Donnelly highlights a single seasonal symbol, the apple, as researchers race to save heirloom species [p. 72]. Need more proof that fall takes many different forms? Check out the colorful travel ideas [p. 58] from Yankee foliage expert Jim Salge and travel editor Kim Knox Beckius (hello, zombie fashion show!). It’s pure New England autumn, in all its many different shades, and, like that boardwalk stroll in Connecticut, it just keeps shining. —Ian Aldrich, executive editor PS: To get a weekly dose of everything autumn in New England, go to newengland.com/fallnewsletter.

CONTRIBUTORS

CHRISTIAN BLA ZA

K E LLY H O R A N

Having created pitch-perfect artwork for previous Yankee essays about the natural world, the New Jersey–based freelance illustrator and designer was the ideal match for this issue’s autumnal tale of an old sugar maple tree [p. 90]. Blaza has been recognized for his work by the Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, and Creative Quarterly.

Horan’s journalism training paired with her eclectic background (lifeguard, French tutor, busser in a haunted restaurant) provided the magic touch needed to draw out bestselling author Alice Hoffman [p. 86]. Their conversation, she says, “spanned decades and many books, and was not at all what I expected it to be, which makes sense, because a Hoffman novel is many things, but it is never predicable.”

12 |

YK0926_FOB_InsideYankee.indd 12

SARA ANNE D O N N E LLY This Maine-based writer grew up eating bland Red Delicious apples from the supermarket, with the occasional Granny Smith thrown in. But after delving into rare heirloom varieties and discovering “the rich diversity of ancient fruit and the community devoted to preserving it” [p. 72], she now favors a type recently found in Penobscot, Maine, dubbed Candy Apple.

MARK OSTOW (HORAN)

GA B R I E L A H E R M A N Herman’s most memorable moment in photographing Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills [p. 64]? “Driving around Lake Waramaug. It was just as magical to watch the early morning fog roll off the lake as it was to see the golden light reflected on the water at day’s end. Each pass around the lake revealed something new.” Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Travel + Leisure.

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 12:45 PM

Fall in Love With

South County, Rhode Island

Fall is the best time of year to visit South County, Rhode Island. September is still warm enough for a swim in one of our 20 public beaches. Catch a show or a movie at The United Theatre. Dine, stay or have a photo shoot at The Preserve’s Hobbit Houses. Visit the completed Thomas Dambo Troll Trail. Learn more at SouthCountyRI.com.

013_YK0926_SouthCounty.indd 13

7/17/26 11:50 AM

First Person | C H R I S T I N E W O O D S I D E In autumn—or in any season— few views of New Hampshire’s Lakes Region can match the one from the open pink-granite ledges at the summit of West Rattlesnake Mountain near Holderness.

An Uphill Kind of Love It’s a special thing to feel a mountain belongs to you, and you belong to it. 14 |

YK0926_FOB_FirstPerson_REV.indd 14

JIM SALGE

y family does not think of a snake when we say the word “rattlesnake” to each other. We mean a mountain, our mountain. Rattlesnake Mountain, above Squam Lake in central New Hampshire. We’ll say, “Let’s go up Rattlesnake.” Maybe some families roller-skate or bowl or play touch football. My family climbs Rattlesnake. Rattlesnake—officially West Rattlesnake Mountain, elevation only 1,260 feet above sea level—has inhabited my family’s collective heart since 1962, when my parents first led me and my three older brothers up it during our vacation at Rockywold Deephaven Camps. While rattlesnake sightings in New Hampshire are extremely rare, the rocky top would make good snake habitat. The path we took cut through a pasture back then; today, the Pasture Trail runs through half-century-old woods. I was so little on my first climb, age 3, that the grass tops were level with my eyes, squinting in the bright sun. I wore blue canvas sneakers, and as I walked with my mother, who carried lunch in a wicker basket, I felt miserable. Then we entered a young woods. Hearing my brothers’ yells up ahead, I stopped whining and staggered the last steps with my mother. We emerged onto a rock expanse, beyond which lay the glittering deep blue of Squam Lake framed by fuzzy dark-green shores and blobs of islands. This was the mountain version of falling in love. My mother told me to stay away from the edge, and I obeyed, hanging back by the red pines. My brothers ignored her and ran to the edge. What had started as a climb up a hill with a picnic lunch became a tradition, a ritual of deep significance. We came to know every trail, and every NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 9:47 AM

Pearl

Seas

Cruises®

Ex per ience a Canada & Ne w England

FALL FOLIAGE CRUISE Cruise the Eastern Seaboard as breathtaking waterways guide you along colorful autumn hues. This 10-night journey will bring you to the very best destinations between Québec City and Portland, Maine. Led by our expert guides, explore small towns and cities, each with a notable history and story to tell.

Explore Well ™

Baie-Comeau Gaspé Percé

Saguenay

QUÉBEC CITY

Charlottetown Eastport

PORTLAND

Call for a FREE Cruise Guide

PSC_MAGAD_YNK_7.75x10.5_ISSUE_SEPOCT2026.indd 1 015_YK0926_PearlSeas.indd 15

Îles de la Madeleine

Halifax Lunenburg

888-890-3732

PearlSeasCruises.com

7/14/26 2:48 PM 7/17/26 12:08 PM

First Person | C H R I S T I N E W O O D S I D E

turn, along with many of the pines that clung to the crevices overlooking Bennett Cove. It seemed eventually as if the mountain knew us, too, in a way. Going up this hill comprised our urban-dwelling family’s regular reconnaissance with nature and with each other. We not only hiked Rattlesnake— we ran up it. In the 1970s, Rockywold Deephaven organized a race called the Mountain Marathon, and it went on for a decade. It started on the camp ballfield and proceeded up a back road to the Col Trail and Ridge Trail to the top, then down the gentle slope of the Old Bridle Path to Route 113, then on asphalt back into camp. The route was about three miles long. My three brothers, my sister, and I all ran this race at one time or another. It was a little bit crazy and a little bit hard. Perfect. I would do anything on Rattlesnake. In all the years our family has been climbing Rattlesnake, I can’t think of a time when anyone—my siblings and I, our spouses, or the 12 children we had among us—tried to beg off going. I haven’t counted the number of times I’ve climbed it, but it’s in the hundreds. I feel the power of returning 16 |

YK0926_FOB_FirstPerson.indd 16

It is a big mountain in a little uniform, a miniature version of the windblown granite crags that give New Hampshire its personality. to a place where I remember particular trees, the curves of the trails, and somewhere a little wild. Rattlesnake is my reference point for climbing. I have gauged the distance of every other mountain I’ve climbed by how many times I’d have to climb Rattlesnake. Nearby Mount Morgan equals almost four Rattlesnakes. Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire: roughly four and a half Rattlesnakes. Most of the big peaks in the White Mountains of New Hampshire: at least eight Rattlesnakes, trail-distance-wise. Maybe it’s a lazy morning, a little cloudy, or an hour and a half before sunset. You’d have time to say, “I think I’ll do Rattlesnake,” and actually do it

safely. It is a big mountain in a little uniform, a miniature version of the windblown granite crags that give New Hampshire its personality. You might start at the Old Bridle Path, off to the southeast of Route 113 between Holderness and Center Sandwich. The switchbacks of this route were designed for horses but are now maintained for people. In 2023, trail workers for the Squam Lakes Association and the University of New Hampshire completed a major restoration of the Old Bridle Path. They fixed drainage and strengthened the treadway with lumberand-crushed-stone check steps and a few retaining walls—beautiful work. Or you might do what my family always did: trudge up the steeper south side, starting from Pinehurst Road. A fork near the bottom lets you choose the Col Trail, which leads to the Ridge Trail, a slightly gentler climb to the summit—about eight-tenths of a mile from that fork—or my family’s original route, the Pasture Trail, which scrambles up just four-tenths of a mile from the fork to the cliffs. Or if you feel even more adventurous, you might want to crab-walk your way up the steepest route of all, from Pinehurst Road, the four-tenths-of-a-mile Ramsey Trail that scrambles directly up the cliff side. That’s our Rattlesnake: the family mountain, where my mother with her bad knee, my father pushing to get into fighting shape, my gazelle-like brothers, my dancer sister, and I all climbed. It’s my sanctuary. My parents nudged me up the first time and climbed it until they couldn’t anymore. The year my mother died, my siblings and I returned in September; it had been a few years since we’d gathered there. We climbed it together, for her. I felt as if I were pulling Mom up just as she had pushed me up. We all knew what this meant. We all were together again on our mountain.

JIM SALGE

Wide, well-maintained, and offering a gentle grade, the Old Bridle Path beckons hikers to the top of West Rattlesnake.

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 11:37 AM

THE MAIN EVENT, NOT THE ACCESSORY. Introducing our Accessory Dwelling Units — built to be anything but secondary.

BARNS & HOMES BY COUNTRY CARPENTERS COUNTRYCARPENTERS.COM (860) 228-2276

Models on Display

Shipped Nationwide EARLY NEW ENGLAND

by Country Carpenters

017_YK0926_CountryCarp.indd 17

7/17/26 12:10 PM

First Light | D E S T I N A T I O N S

Brushing Up Against a Legend At Winslow Homer’s coastal Maine studio, the famous painter shifts from historical figure into something more like a friend. BY MADELINE BILIS

On the second floor of Homer’s studio on Prouts Neck, a door opens onto the wraparound balcony overlooking the Atlantic. Homer called this space his “piazza” and often painted within its shelter during the long Maine winter. inset: A former carriage house, the studio building was adapted for Homer’s use in 1884, including being moved about 100 feet for added privacy (his brother’s summer home sat just next door).

18 |

YK0926_FL_Opener.indd 18

7/16/26 12:39 PM

t’s a cloudless Friday in Scarborough, Maine, and I’ve found the autumnal trifecta—warm sun, cool breeze, peak foliage— while balancing on some deeply grooved rocks jutting out into Saco Bay. Standing in the spot where Winslow Homer produced some of his most well-known paintings of the sea, I’m drinking in my favorite part of the afternoon: the “sparkly hour,” when the ocean shimmers brilliantly on the horizon. Homer, of course, would have hated this. “It’s not a Winslow Homer kind of day,” says my tour guide, Beth Sanders, pointing out that the famous American Realist artist preferred much moodier weather. Along with 11 other visitors, I’m on a guided tour of Homer’s studio on Prouts Neck, owned by the Portland Museum of Art. In addition to forest-green field guides in which to jot down notes and observations, we’ve all been given postcards of Homer’s iconic 1894 oil painting Weatherbeaten, completed from these very rocks. I hold up my postcard to the coastline; aside from the cheery blue skies and gentler waves in front of me, it’s a perfect match. If a nor’easter moved in, it’d be like standing inside the painting.

I soon learn that Winslow Homer was born in Boston in 1836 and raised in nearby Cambridge. Showing an aptitude for art from a young age, he moved to New York in his early 20s, finding work first as a commercial printmaker and then as an illustrator. He trekked to the front lines of the Civil War to depict soldiers’ experiences for Harper’s Weekly, and soon began solidifying his reputation as a painter. Homer traveled widely, finding inspiration in places like Gloucester, Massachusetts; the Adirondacks; and the northeast coast of England. Throughout it all, he discovered a deep love for the outdoors—and in particular, the sea. It wasn’t until the summer of 1883, at age 47, that Homer settled in Prouts Neck, where his family had bought a plot of land and built a sprawling home. The next year, he tapped architect John Calvin Stevens to convert the property’s carriage house into a residence and artist’s studio. When he wasn’t traveling, Homer whiled away his days here, rendering the ocean in vivid colors and fluid brushstrokes until his death in 1910. Today, the studio is open for guided tours from early April through early November. The visitor journey begins at the museum in Portland, where you’re whisked upstairs to admire the original | 19

YK0926_FL_Opener.indd 19

7/16/26 12:40 PM

ABOVE: On the Portland

Museum of Art tour, visitors can stand on the same rockbound coast that helped inspire masterworks of American Realism. BELOW: Taken around 1900, the only known photograph of Homer in his studio shows him in front of The Gulf Stream, a celebrated painting now hanging in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

20 |

YK0926_FL_Opener_REV.indd 20

Weatherbeaten before seeing where it was born. Then, you board a small bus headed to Prouts Neck, an ultra-exclusive community that’s long been closed to outside drivers. As you approach its gates, the bus driver presses a small button in his sun visor—just above a Winslow Homer bobblehead on the dashboard—to gain entry. We all filter out of the bus and regard the small, boxy studio, painted charcoal gray with brick-red trim, with quiet awe. Entering through the side door feels a lot like stepping back in time. Paneled in warm wood, the main living

area is crowned by a central fireplace; Homer’s original pipe rests on the mantel. On an adjoining wall are fish he caught and mounted, as well as a sign that reads “SNAKES! SNAKES! MICE!” which the artist once posted outside to ward off uninvited guests. The studio’s immersive soundscape, part of a slate of updates that the museum debuted in 2021, makes it seem as if Homer could be walking around upstairs. But it’s only when I see his penciled inscriptions on the walls that I feel like he might actually be in the next room. “Oh what a friend chance can be when it chooses,” he scribbled on the wood, a quote from an 1871 detective novel called The Clique of Gold. (“He was a big reader,” William Cross, author of the Homer biography American Passage, tells me later. “He was a high school dropout, but he was, as we say in Boston, mighty smaht.”) Peering into the studio’s small library alcove, I feel a kinship with Homer. In addition to a copy of The Clique of Gold, three volumes of the Sherlock Holmes series are on display; it seems the painter and I share a love for mystery novels. Being here almost makes him seem like a person I could’ve befriended, rather than a larger-thanlife historical figure. Then Beth, the tour guide,

T R E N T B E L L / C O U R T E S Y O F P O R T L A N D M U S E U M O F A R T ( C O A S T L I N E ) ; B O W D O I N C O L L E G E M U S E U M O F A R T, B R U N S W I C K , M A I N E , G I F T O F T H E H O M E R FA M I LY ( A R C H I VA L ). P R E V I O U S S P R E A D : T R E N T B E L L / C O U R T E S Y O F P O R T L A N D M U S E U M O F A R T

First Light | D E S T I N A T I O N S

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 9:49 AM

021_YK0926_PermaChink.indd 21

7/17/26 12:19 PM

shows me the windowpane where he scratched his name in the glass. As I move my face closer to the window, I realize Homer must have done the very same thing while etching it. I continue following in Homer’s footsteps as I make my way to the second floor, where a door to my right opens to a breezy piazza. The deck wraps around the part of the building that faces the sea, overlooking a grassy expanse punctuated by sinuous juniper trees resembling oversize bonsai. I’m told that they’re trees Homer planted and pruned himself to give them their windswept look. I linger a moment, admiring his horticultural handiwork and the way the piazza’s crisscrossing latticework casts geometric shadows on the floorboards, before 22 |

YK0926_FL_Opener_REV.indd 22

heading back down and out to the lawn. I settle into an Adirondack chair beside the studio until it’s time to board the bus. As I take in the scenery, puffy clouds shield the sun, bringing the sparkly hour to an end. For a few fleeting moments, I get a taste of Homer’s preferred flavor of weather. And watching the ocean take on a striking silver tone, I realize I’ve just acquired a new favorite part of the afternoon: the “Homer hour.”

counterclockwise from top: A view of the studio’s parlor, with Homer’s original tobacco pipe featured on the mantel; a display of reproduction paints gives a feel for Homer’s favored palette; Weatherbeaten, which depicts the sea crashing into rocks near the studio, is now a prized part of the Portland Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

For details on visiting Winslow Homer’s studio or to book a tour, go to portlandmuseum.org.

T R E N T B E L L /C O U R T E S Y O F P O R T L A N D M U S E U M O F A R T ( I N T E R I O R , PA I N T S ) ; W E ATH E R B E ATE N , 1 8 9 4 , B Y W I N S L O W H O M E R , P O R T L A N D M U S E U M O F A R T, B E Q U E S T O F C H A R L E S S H I P M A N PAY S O N , 1 9 8 8 . 5 5 .1 ( PA I N T I N G )

First Light | D E S T I N A T I O N S

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 9:53 AM

Kimball Farms: It’s Where You Live Experience the comfort and convenience of a community designed for every stage of life.

INDEPENDENT LIVING ASSISTED LIVING M E M O RY CA R E At Kimball Farms, we provide everything you need on one beautiful campus, allowing you to age in place as your needs change.

Discover a place where you can truly live.

To learn more, call 413-881-6321 or visit www.KimballFarmsLifeCare.com

235 Walker Street Lenox, MA 01240 413-637-7000 www.kimballfarms.org

023_YK0926_KimballFarms.indd 23

2013

GOLD

7/17/26 1:43 PM

First Light | U P C L O S E

The Hole Story

Whether tossed in cinnamon sugar, glazed, or (gasp!) plain, New England’s cider doughnuts owe a debt to the biggest of apples.

In 1951, as autumn was approaching, The New York Times reported that a Midtown-based enterprise called the Doughnut Corporation of America was debuting the Sweet Cider Doughnut, “a spicy round cake that is expected to have a natural fall appeal.” While serving doughnuts with cider was already a seasonal

MARK FLEMING

pples are so essentially New England-y that one might assume they’re native to our shores. In fact, domesticated apples originated in the mountains of Central Asia and made their way here on waves of trade and immigration. Likewise, you might expect cider doughnuts to have roots in 18th-century Vermont homestead life or some early New England agrarian festival. Instead, think midcentury Manhattan.

tradition, especially at Halloween, DCA’s inspired idea was to put the cider straight into the batter, lending a sweet tang to a simple cake doughnut. (Did some anonymous home cook ever add cider to their batter before 1951? Most likely, but in the history of innovation, to the popularizer goes the publicity.) The cider doughnut became a success that has long outlived DCA itself, and seven decades onward, it’s hard to imagine fall in New England without these toothsome treats. Among the signs of their regional appeal: Just this year, a group of New Hampshire fourth-graders crafted a bill to have the cider doughnut named their state’s official doughnut. Among New England’s many cider doughnut hubs, Vermont’s Cold Hollow Cider Mill and Massachusetts’s Red Apple Farm (both of which churn out thousands of doughnuts a day during peak season) are two standouts. But they’re all great. And if you hand me a paper bag of still-warm cider doughnuts on a fall day, I’ll not only love them, but I’ll swear they were invented right here. —Amy Traverso

24 |

YK0926_FL_UpClose_REV.indd 24

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 9:56 AM

Explore the Extraordinary

VisitHampshireCounty.com Arts Outdoor Recreation Recreation I Farm-to-Fork Farm-to-Fork Cuisine Cuisine Arts & & Culture Culture I Outdoor

Hiking in Skinner State Park, Hadley; Yiddish Book Center, Amherst; dinner at Eastside Grill, Northampton; Paradise City Arts Festival, Northampton; The Old Mill Inn, Hatfield. Lynne Graves photos.

Hampshire HampshireCounty County

The TheOther OtherSide Sideof ofMassachusetts Massachusetts

025_YK0926_HampshireCnty.indd 25

7/17/26 1:45 PM

Home | P R I V A T E T O U R

Totally Lit How a century-old-plus lighthouse keeper’s cottage got a stylish update with the help of a local designer and a bit of star power. BY MADELINE BILIS PHOTOS BY JARED KUZIA

hen Kristina Crestin first hopped on a small boat to Bakers Island, located about four miles off the coast of Salem, Massachusetts, she hadn’t realized she’d need to wait for the waves to settle—then jump directly onto some wet rocks—to come ashore, with all her supplies in tow. To the Essex–based interior designer, best known for her work on the HGTV show Farmhouse Fixer, it felt a bit like storming the beaches of Normandy. “That’s the only thing I have in my head, when you picture the soldiers coming onto the beach,” Crestin says. Because the 60-acre island has no public dock, the boat, operated by the nonprofit Essex Heritage, lands in a slightly different spot each time depending on the tides—much as boats did when lighthouse keepers worked around the clock to keep Bakers Island Light Station operating for over 150 years. “I know how dicey it can be getting out on our boat,” says Cheri Grishin, director of operations for Essex Heritage, which owns and maintains the light station as part of the Essex National 26 |

YK0926_Home_Opener2.indd 26

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 12:54 PM

For the Bakers Island cottage, interior designer Kristina Crestin spent months searching for furnishings that could be broken down into smaller parts, making them easier to transport by boat from the mainland. One such piece is the vintage bamboo-framed sofa in the living room, a conveniently modular four-seater.

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_Home_Opener2.indd 27

| 27

7/16/26 12:54 PM

Heritage Area. “I can’t imagine how it used to be, getting out to the island year-round and in the winter.” While there’s an air of romance around the idea of being a lighthouse keeper off the coast of New England, it was a demanding, often dangerous post, with keepers on Bakers Island regularly rescuing people from shipwrecked boats in the harbor. “It was definitely a hard life,” says Ryan Conary, Essex Heritage’s program and event manager. “It was a day of constantly refueling the lens and keeping the fire lit at night every couple hours.” The keepers often brought their families to live with them, raising livestock and growing their own food on the island. Conary likens it to living off the grid— 28 |

YK0926_Home_Opener2.indd 28

just with nonstop work mixed in. “Scraped oil + gas tanks at boat house. Brot out lawn mower,” reads a June 1934 journal entry from Ernest Sampson, the lighthouse’s assistant keeper in the 1930s. Scribbled in the memos is another note: “Was going to quit but changed mind.” Bakers Island Light was originally constructed along with a smaller twin lighthouse in 1798 as a navigational aid for Salem Harbor. They were rebuilt as taller granite towers in 1816 and 1820, though the shorter of the two was dismantled in 1926. Today, the remaining lighthouse is automated and operated by the U.S. Coast Guard. Volunteer keepers get a tiny sliver of Sampson’s experience each summer, while most members of

Essex Heritage can rent out the 1873 assistant keeper’s cottage for a coastal getaway minus the chores. It was this rental that caught the interest of the producers of Farmhouse Fixer, the 2021–2024 show in which Crestin teamed up with Dorchester native and former New Kids on the Block member Jonathan Knight to restore antique New England homes. They’d been searching for a lighthouse project to feature, and wondered if the assistant keeper’s house could use a professional makeover. NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 1:03 PM

H I STO R I C ES S E X (A RC H I VA L); N AT E WA LTO N ( A E R I A L )

Home | P R I V A T E T O U R

ABOVE, FROM FAR LEFT: For a marine palette,

H I STO R I C ES S E X (A RC H I VA L); N AT E WA LTO N ( A E R I A L )

Crestin chose Benjamin Moore Evening Dove, shown here, to contrast with the main wall color, White Dove; lining the staircase are nautical paintings reproduced on PVC, a better fit for summer humidity in the 1873 cottage; an aerial view showing the assistant keeper’s cottage (second white building from lighthouse). RIGHT: Assistant keeper Ernest Sampson with his kids in the 1930s.

The caveat: Essex Heritage would have to foot the bill. So Crestin and Knight stepped in to help with fundraising efforts—at one point raffling off the opportunity for a fan to run their hand through Knight’s hair—and raised enough to pump up the budget to $100,000. From there, Crestin and Knight put their heads together to take the barebones cottage, filled with Ikea furniture and aging builder-grade fixtures, to what Crestin calls a nostalgic “coastal SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_Home_Opener2.indd 29

grandma” getaway. In the kitchen, for instance, the duo decided to paint the cabinets a deep blue; bring in a candycolored, retro-style refrigerator; and install light fixtures resembling those from a ship, bought at Marblehead’s Brass ’n Bounty. Essex Heritage also opted to refurbish the cottage’s 1930s Crawford cast-iron stove—a fixture that weighed more than 300 pounds—which required lugging it back to the mainland. “It had to go across a field, go down the rocks, get on | 29

7/16/26 1:03 PM

Home | P R I V A T E T O U R

the boat, go through the harbor,” Crestin says. “It’s a little bit nuts.” Beyond the daunting task of transporting everything to and from the island’s rocky shores, there was another challenge: Almost all of the work on the cottage was done by Essex Heritage volunteers, a group of non-tradespeople who worked only on Wednesdays. And when seas were rough or storms were in the forecast, timelines were pushed back even further. But this historical renovation had been a long time coming, as Crestin and her team were reminded when they discovered the names of former Coast Guard members inscribed on old wall studs and dated April 1966. “We opened up the ceiling. We opened up the walls,” she explains. “We saw all sorts of writing of past people who had worked on it over the years.” (As a nod to the renovators of years past, Crestin and the team wrote their names, too, dated 2023.) Aside from decades-old doodles, the team found classic board-and-batten 30 |

YK0926_Home_Opener2.indd 30

under the cottage’s walls—a look that Crestin had already outlined in her plans. “That was totally validating as a design choice,” she says, electing to preserve the old-school paneling style. And after opening the ceiling, the team discovered the original wooden subfloor from above was in excellent shape, so they decided to leave it exposed. “It’s dark, but this is what makes it feel like an antique cottage in New England,” Crestin adds. She hung a brass light fixture with hobnail milk-glass shades in the center of the exposed beams, outfitting the rest of the home with nautical flags, wooden buoys, rope accents, and other marinerelated touches. Crestin sourced scores of nautical antiques and accessories from her favorite shops up and down the coast of Maine, including Cabot Mill Antiques in Brunswick and Antiques USA in Arundel. “I did so many road trips just trying to find things that felt like they would fit here, because I didn’t want it to look like somebody just decorated it that year,”

A centerpiece of the rehabbed kitchen (left) is the vintage Crawford cast-iron stove, which was restored by Massachusetts-based Erickson’s Antique Stoves and now sits beneath an eye-catching copper swordfish (right) donated by The Tin Shop in Beverly.

she says. “The whole point is that somebody’s going to take the effort to rent this cottage, go on the boat, and make a whole excursion of it.” The idea is for guests to step back in time—away from screens and other modern interruptions—and enjoy the salt air. “When you arrive, you want it to feel like an experience,” Crestin says. “You want it to feel like something that was collected over time.” In addition to renting out the assistant keeper’s house (available to Essex Heritage members of Voyager level or higher), Essex Heritage offers Bakers Island boat tours and opportunities to camp on the island during the summer season. For details, go to bakersislandlight.org. NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 1:05 PM

nly y m o is awa .co e r to nds elers s r o Ou sec ssjew 45 Cro w. w w

Tiger in the jungle of Sri Lanka

Reflect On Your Day Sapphire/Diamond Ring #G5743

A Story About Blue Sapphire I Will Never Forget

This is the treasure hunter in me. This is a revelation of the spirit of a treasure hunter. I heard this story about the building of a road through the Sri Lankan jungle. They started with a solid gravel base. The gravel pit was several miles away. The trucks came; they dumped. The grader operator smoothed. Things proceeded easily, until at noon a truck driver dumped a load of gravel, got out of his truck for a cigarette and while leaning against his truck noticed a flash of blue on the new road. He picked it up and it was a sapphire crystal. A fine blue gem. Then he noticed another and then another. Other truck drivers noticed an excited man on his hands and knees picking stuff up. Even the grader operator climbed down and started picking up blue gems. In less than two hours the grader operator and truck drivers were gone and the Sri Lankan military guarded the road and secured the gem mine. It’s now years later, we’re certain some of the blue sapphire gems we acquired during that period came from that road being built through the jungle. Stories like this come from countries where they mine gems. We still have sapphires from that period of time. Visit our website to learn more about blue sapphire and other gems of the world. Today we’re showing one of our favorite blue sapphire rings. We don’t believe the sapphire came from the Sri Lankan jungle road. There is no way of absolutely knowing…But then again, maybe. (SHOWROOM NOT OPEN)

Y91026

WE ARE NOW EXCLUSIVELY ONLINE! ALWAYS FREE SHIPPING!

031_YK0926_CrossJewelers.indd 31

Cross Jewelers

Visit our Online Gallery of Fine Jewelry

www.Crossjewelers.com 1-800-433-2988

Easy, Easy, Easy

A. Order online 24 hours a day B. Order by phone M-F 9:30-5 EST Free Shipping Safe, fast, free anywhere USA Over 1,000 great jewelry items on our website. Ready to ship immediately!

7/17/26 1:50 PM

Home | M A D E I N N E W E N G L A N D

Rough & Tumble’s unisex 1903 East + West bags, inspired by turn-of-the-20thcentury industry and trades.

For Rough & Tumble, good looks and luxe materials plus made-in-Maine pride equals bags worth coveting. B Y A LY S S A G I A C O B B E

32 |

YK0926_Home_MadeInNewEngland_REV.indd 32

COURTESY OF ROUGH & TUMBLE

Toting It All Up

fter almost two decades immersed in the busy Portland restaurant scene as a chef and then an owner, Natasha Durham was ready to come up for air. So she sold one of her restaurants, closed the other, and took some time to reinvent herself. “I knew that I wanted to make something with my hands, something authentic, something beautiful, using luxury materials,” says Durham, who had studied sculpture at the Portland School of Art (now Maine College of Art & Design). “I really didn’t care what it was— just that it not be perishable.” Turns out, her inspiration was born out of necessity. Wanting a bag to carry her airplane reading for an upcoming trip to Italy with her son, she delved into the silks and linens she’d saved from years of travels to Europe, and sewed together two rectangles of fabric at her kitchen table. “You would have NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 10:00 AM

KloterFarms.com 216 West Road Ellington, CT 860.871.1048

OUTDOOR STRUC TURES, CUSTOM FURNITURE & CABINETRY

033_YK0926_KloterFarms.indd 33

Ask About Free Delivery in CT, MA, RI

7/17/26 1:51 PM

above: Leathers from around the world make their way to Rough & Tumble’s design studio,

including some that are custom-made just for this Maine-based company. below: Every step of crafting a Rough & Tumble bag—cutting, stitching, riveting—is done by hand.

34 |

YK0926_Home_MadeInNewEngland.indd 34

thought I’d solved world peace,” she says. “I was so impressed with myself that I had made a three-dimensional object.... I wasn’t as excited about the trip as I was about getting back and being able to figure out a way to put a little flap on it or something. And that’s how it began.” In 2008, Durham launched her own bag-making enterprise and dubbed it Rough & Tumble, a name inspired by the concept of rugged luxury. After being introduced to Etsy by a friend, she recruited her son to help get photos online. She made and listed two bags— shoulder bags that converted to backpacks—and went to bed. By morning, both had sold, and Rough & Tumble was officially on its way. At first, Durham continued with bags made of high-end textiles. But about a year in, and some 20 weeks behind on orders, she realized that if she introduced leather she could increase her profit margin, one that suited the amount of time she was taking to hand-stitch everything. She moved an industrial riveter into her living room, began sourcing fine leathers from Italy, and before long was selling $50,000 worth of bags a month on Etsy. “And then my husband came home one day and said, ‘You need to move this company out of the house,’” she says. Rough & Tumble’s first workspace and showroom opened in 2013 inside a former opera house in Norway, Maine. By then, Durham was employing a dozen independent contractors, with each creating a particular bag from beginning to end, such as the 1903, inspired by turnof-the-century satchels used by trolley drivers. Having grown up in a family of artists, Durham wanted a nice aesthetic in her bags but valued their utility even more. Compared with paintings on a wall, she says, “I saw much more beauty and usefulness in taking that same artistic process and putting it into an item that’s going to enrich your life.” Although breaking customers’ Etsy habit proved challenging, little by little the company’s retail website—which had launched before the move to Norway—took hold. But the real shift

ERIN LITTLE

Home | M A D E I N N E W E N G L A N D

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 1:14 PM

2YE5AR

035_YK0926_GreenhousesDirect.indd 35

7/17/26 1:53 PM

above: Rough & Tumble founder and creative director Natasha Durham, outside her

company’s original shop in the city’s Old Port district. below: Rough & Tumble’s current flagship store in the Old Port’s landmark 1867 Boyd Block.

36 |

YK0926_Home_MadeInNewEngland.indd 36

came when Rough & Tumble introduced an online tool that let customers custom-create their bags, choosing the silhouette, leather, lining, and hardware from hundreds of options. “A client will discover us, they’ll buy a bag, and literally within a month and a half they’ve bought three more,” says Louise Gartland, director of production and development. “They become completely enchanted with designing for themselves online.” By 2017, Rough & Tumble had outgrown its Norway space, and Durham moved the company into an 8,000-square-foot-plus design, production, and storage facility in Brunswick’s historic Fort Andross Mill. There’s also a flagship retail store, located on a prime corner in Portland’s Old Port, that doubles as a showroom. The more than 70 styles on offer at any given time include wallets, totes, backpacks, and clutches, most made from Italian leather but with some in waxed canvas and fabric, too. Each year the brand launches “as many bags as choose to be born,” says Durham, without any real strategy other than asking whether the right leather is available and if the artisans can execute the designs. “Our clients are quite discerning for us to hone out little nuances, like, ‘My hand doesn’t feel exactly right in that pocket,’” she says. “And we listen. Sometimes we’ll launch a bag and then we’ll change it three weeks later. No one on the planet does that.” Durham remains committed to producing in Maine, with Mainers, and now employs about 40. By 2028, the brand will relocate to a new 16,000-square-foot facility at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station in order to expand its wholesale business. Still, every bag continues to be made by a single artisan, start to finish. “I’m not a ‘woo-woo’ person, but I do believe that an object can hold the soul of the maker,” Durham says. “Clients will say they can feel these bags were not just pieces on an assembly line, rolling through and popping out. They can feel that this is a real thing.”

ERIN LITTLE

Home | M A D E I N N E W E N G L A N D

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 1:16 PM

LEAVE NOTHING BEHIND WITH A DR LEAF & LAWN VACUUM ®

 POWER to pick up deep leaf cover, grass, nuts, and more  SHREDS MATERIAL to collect more with each pass  THE LEADER IN LEAF VACS with the widest selection of commercial, walk- and tow-behind models PILOT XTSP

OWN EVERY ACRE WITH DR POWER ®

DR CHIPPERS ARE BUILT BETTER

DO MORE WITH A DR TRIMMER MOWER

 HIGH-TORQUE POWER turns branches into mulch in minutes  DURABLE STEEL CONSTRUCTION stands up to daily use  WIDE CHIPPING HOPPERS self-feed material without removing side branches

 UP TO 5X MORE POWER than a handheld trimmer  MANEUVERABILITY that goes everywhere a bladed mower can’t  VERSATILITY to mow more with the toughest trimmer cord you can buy

PRO

PRO XL575

Scan now to shop DRPower.com

Toll-Free: 800-242-8639 | FREE SHIPPING Options Available

037_YK0926_DR_Power.indd 37

7/17/26 1:54 PM

Food | R E C I P E S P O T L I G H T

Blue-Ribbon Buffet Agricultural fair champions share recipes with that sweet taste of victory.

BY A M Y T R AV E R S O | P H OTO S BY J O S E P H K E LLE R | S T Y LI N G BY CAT R I N E K E LT Y

38 |

YK0926_Food_Opener.indd 38

7/24/26 10:13 AM

Representing fairs from Fryeburg, Maine, to Durham, Connecticut, is a spread that includes (from left) Blue Ribbon Apple Pie, Triple Cherry Lattice Pie, Bread and Butter Pickles, Maine Raspberry Crumble Bars, and CranberryOrange Muffins with Streusel Topping.

| 39

YK0926_Food_Opener.indd 39

7/16/26 3:39 PM

Blue Ribbon Apple Pie

t’s ag fair time in New England—that end-of-season moment when farmers gather to commune and compete in all things agricultural while the rest of us stuff ourselves silly with corn dogs and cotton candy. These fairs are a New England invention, the brainchild of a Massachusetts farmer and merchant named Elkanah Watson, who organized the first cattle show and an impressive oxen-drawn plough procession in Pittsfield in 1811. Understanding that farming was solitary and often isolating work, Watson promoted his agricultural society model up and down the East Coast, giving farmers an opportunity to trade wisdom and earn bragging rights. Today, the ag fair’s many treasures are found in the livestock pavilions, 4-H halls, and craft centers at the heart of the fairgrounds. Pumpkins the size of ponies, hand-grown floral displays, blue-ribbon pies—it’s an amazing concentration of home- and farm-based talent enjoying its moment in the sun. In that spirit, I reached out to five of New England’s premier agricultural fairs to gather prize-winning recipes from their talented home cooks, the analog influencers who pass their baking and canning expertise along to the next generation through these events. And as I quickly learned, every fair has endless recipes to offer, and every cook has a story. 40 |

YK0926_Food_Opener.indd 40

BLUE RIBBON APPLE PIE Cook: Jannine Fisk, Malden, MA Fair: Topsfield Fair, MA (Oct. 2–12, 2026)

A repeat entrant in the Topsfield Fair’s baking competitions, Jannine spent years perfecting this recipe. “I had won blue ribbons in all the other contests, but the apple pie category was the elusive blue ribbon I had been waiting to add to my collection.” In 2018, she finally got it. “I have it framed and hanging in my kitchen,” she says. Here are her secrets: “Cortland apples are a New England classic for good reason: They hold their shape in the oven, don’t turn to mush, and have just enough tartness to balance a spiced filling. Macoun or Northern Spy apples also work well. If your apples release a lot of liquid after slicing, drain them briefly before NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 3:39 PM

RECIPE SPOTLIGHT

tossing with the spice mixture.” Also, she brushes inside the bottom crust with an egg wash to prevent sogginess. And a blast of high heat at the start of baking gives the crust a head start on browning. FOR THE CRUST

3 cups all-purpose flour ½ teaspoon granulated sugar ½ teaspoon table salt 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, very cold, cut into ½-inch cubes ½ cup very cold water

1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon ¹⁄8 teaspoon ground nutmeg ¹⁄8 teaspoon ground ginger ¹⁄8 teaspoon ground allspice 5 pounds Cortland apples (about 7–8 large apples), peeled and thinly sliced 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into small cubes 1 large egg 1 teaspoon water 2 teaspoons sanding sugar (optional)

FOR THE FILLING

1/4 cup all-purpose flour ½ cup granulated sugar 2 tablespoons light brown sugar, firmly packed

First, make the crust: Whisk together flour, granulated sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Cut in butter with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles Maine Raspberry Crumble Bars, recipe p. 42 Haddock Fillets with Deer Isle Succotash

| Food

coarse sand (you want some pieces the size of small peas). Drizzle in ice water a little at a time, stirring with a fork, until the dough just holds together when pressed. Divide into two equal disks, flatten slightly, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 30 minutes and up to 2 days. Meanwhile, make the filling: Whisk together flour, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice in a small bowl. Toss apple slices with lemon juice, then with the spice mixture. Add butter cubes and stir to coat. Then, assemble the pie: Beat egg with water in a small bowl to make an egg wash. Roll out one dough disk and fit into a well-greased 9-inch pie plate. Brush with a thin layer of egg wash; let sit for 10 minutes before filling with the apple mixture, mounding as needed. Brush the outer rim of the crust with egg wash, lay the second rolled-out dough disk over the filling to make the top crust, and press to seal. Trim and crimp the edges, and cut a few vents in the top. Brush the entire surface with egg wash and sprinkle with sanding sugar, if using. Refrigerate 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 400°F and set a rack to the lower position. Bake pie for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350°F and continue baking until the crust is deep golden brown and the juices bubble thickly, 45 to 55 minutes more. Rotate halfway through if your oven runs unevenly; tent the edges with foil if they darken too quickly. Cool completely on a wire rack before slicing, at least 2 hours. Yields 8 to 10 servings. CRANBERRY-ORANGE MUFFINS WITH STREUSEL TOPPING Cook: Alexia Lemon, Concord, NH Fair: Deerfield Fair, NH (Oct. 1–4, 2026)

Sweet Corn Vegetarian Chowder, recipe p. 39

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_Food_Opener.indd 41

Here’s a recipe from a first-time blue-ribbon winner. Both of Alexia’s debut entries at the Deerfield Fair— lemony white chocolate chip cookies and these cranberry-orange muffins—won the top prize last year. “I’ve loved baking since I was around 12,” says | 41

7/16/26 3:40 PM

Food | R E C I P E S P O T L I G H T Cranberry-Orange Muffins with Streusel Topping

Alexia, who was inspired by an uncle who owns a bakery in France. “I started by learning to follow recipes from packages and cookbooks, and over time developed into being able to create my own homemade goods. I decided last year that I wanted to enter something into the fair to see how it got judged, and I’m currently trying to decide what I want to bake for this year!” For these muffins, the frozen cranberries should go straight from the freezer into the batter—no thawing needed. The streusel on top bakes into a crackly, buttery crust that makes it worth the extra five minutes of effort. FOR THE STREUSEL

¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 2½ tablespoons firmly packed light brown sugar 1½ tablespoons granulated sugar ¹⁄8 teaspoon table salt 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted 42 |

YK0926_Food_Opener.indd 42

FOR THE MUFFINS

½ 2 ¾ ¼ ½ 1 ¾ 2 ½ 2 2

cup vegetable oil large eggs cup granulated sugar cup buttermilk cup fresh orange juice tablespoon orange zest teaspoon table salt teaspoons baking powder teaspoon baking soda cups all-purpose flour cups frozen cranberries

Preheat oven to 350°F and set a rack to the middle position. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners. First, make the streusel: Whisk together flour, both sugars, and salt in a medium bowl. Drizzle in melted butter and stir lightly until the mixture forms clumps. Set aside. Next, make the muffins: Whisk oil, eggs, and granulated sugar together in a large bowl until combined. Add buttermilk, orange juice, orange zest, and salt and stir to combine. Add baking powder and baking soda and stir briefly, then fold

in flour until just combined (a few streaks are fine). Fold in frozen cranberries. Divide batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups; they will be nearly full. Top each with a generous spoonful of streusel, pressing lightly to adhere. Bake until the streusel is golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 22 to 26 minutes. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Yields 12 muffins. MAINE RASPBERRY CRUMBLE BARS Cook: The late Norma C. King, Lovell, ME Fair: Fryeburg Fair, ME (Oct. 4–11, 2026)

For over 40 years, Norma C. “Sunshine” King was a Fryeburg Fair star. She won hundreds of ribbons in baking, gardening, and art contests, and served as a fair ambassador to the local media. Among her winning categories: apple pie, dried-flower arranging, photography, and garden vegetables. “We wait all year for the fair to come,” she told the TV show Chronicle, “and I see it as an extension NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 3:40 PM

Bread and Butter Pickles, recipe p. 96

Triple Cherry Lattice Pie

of my home.” Norma passed away in January at age 95, and we are happy to honor her legacy by sharing this recipe. Note: Maine bakers have a long history of incorporating mashed spuds into things like breads, cakes, and cookies, which makes them more tender and moist. If you don’t happen to have any leftover mashed potatoes on hand, just prick a potato all over with a fork and microwave it for 4 or 5 minutes. 1¾ ²⁄3 ¾ ½ ½ ½ 1 1 ¼ ¾

cups all-purpose flour cup finely chopped walnuts cup (1½ sticks) salted butter cup cooked, mashed potato, at room temperature cup powdered sugar, plus more for garnish teaspoon lemon zest teaspoon lemon juice teaspoon vanilla extract teaspoon almond extract cup raspberry jam

Preheat oven to 375°F and set a rack to the middle position. Grease a 9-bySEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_Food_Opener.indd 43

9-inch baking pan and set aside. In a medium bowl, stir flour and walnuts together, and set aside. In a large bowl, using a stand or handheld mixer, beat the butter until soft. Add the mashed potato and beat until combined, then beat in powdered sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla and almond extracts. Add the f lour-nut mixture and beat just until crumbly. Press ⅔ of the crumb mixture into an even layer at the bottom of the baking pan. Spread raspberry jam over the base, then sprinkle remaining bits of crumb mixture over the top. Bake until golden and fragrant, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from oven, cool to room temperature, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and cut into bars. Yields 12 bars. TRIPLE CHERRY LATTICE PIE Cook: Reena Kapoor, Branford, CT Fair: Durham Fair, CT (Sep. 24–27, 2026)

To understand how good this pie is, consider the words of Megan Boyles,

Durham Fair baking superintendent and founder of the Connecticut Triple Crown of Baking: “Reena’s cherry lattice pie is the only one I have ever judged that received perfect marks across the board from an entire judging panel. It is exceptional.” Reena started competing in ag fairs in 2016, about a decade into her career as a forensic psychiatrist. “Baking became a way for me to bring joy and pleasure into the world, balancing the tragedy I encountered in my work,” she says. “Truly, what is more joyful than a herringbone lattice crust topping a sweet-tart cherry filling?” The secret to her pie? “The three types of cherries give this pie more depth than any single variety could manage on its own. Tapioca flour thickens the filling cleanly, without the starchy aftertaste cornstarch can leave behind. The lattice is worth the effort: It lets steam escape and shows off the glossy filling beneath.” (Continued on p. 96) | 43

7/16/26 3:41 PM

Food | W E E K E N D S I N T H E K I T C H E N

Corn Fed

Two recipes—one sweet and one savory—make delicious use of cornmeal, New England’s original grain. ST YLED AND PHOTOGR APHED BY LIZ NEILY

Amy Traverso is Yankee’s senior food editor and host of our TV show, Weekends with Yankee.

Cornbread & Chili Skillet Pie

44 |

YK0926_Food_Weekends.indd 44

hile visiting Plymouth, Massachusetts, for season 10 of Weekends with Yankee, we stopped into the Plimoth Patuxet Museums’ gristmill, where antique water-powered millstones grind exceptional meal from wheat, rye, oats, and flint corn. Among the grains: a variety of White Cap flint corn that was first cultivated by the Narragansett tribe of Rhode Island and has been in use for more than 300 years. At the museum’s nearby Historic Patuxet Homesite, lead interpreter and Wampanoag culinary expert Malissa Costa showed me how Indigenous cooks have long used ground corn to make nasaump, a porridge that can be enriched with native berries, nuts, and maple syrup, depending on the season. In our case, blueberries and walnuts added such rich flavor that I couldn’t wait to go home and make it into a corn and berry porridge for breakfast (though I learned from Costa that the Wampanoag, who didn’t designate specific “breakfast” or “dinner” foods, would serve nasaump at any time of day). Later, I met up with chef and lifelong history student Marc Sheehan at Northern Spy restaurant in Canton, Massachusetts, where he explained how early European colonists came to rely on this native style of porridge, which they called “samp,” as a staple food. Then, tipping his hat to Wampanoag msíckquatash (aka succotash), Sheehan served up pristine trout filets over a stew of corn, beans, and hominy enriched with butter, lemon, and aromatics—all atop a pool of creamy NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 2:32 PM

ALL-NEW SEASON! Now Airing on Public Television and Create TV Nationwide Check local listings at weekendswithyankee.com

F U N D E D B Y:

WWY_HouseAd_YK0926.indd 45

B R O U G H T TO YO U B Y T H E G O O D P E O P L E AT:

7/20/26 1:04 PM

Food | W E E K E N D S I N T H E K I T C H E N

Corn & Berry Porridge

samp (find Sheehan’s succotash recipe at newengland.com/succotash). Back in my own kitchen, with bags of the gristmill’s ground corn on hand, I developed the following recipes. The first is the perfect dinner for chilly nights: a flavor-packed skillet pie of classic chili topped with a scallionflecked cornbread crust. The second is my own variation on nasaump, cooked with cranberries (native to New England) and topped with toasted walnuts and fresh berries. I’m certain I used more maple syrup than a Wampanoag cook ever would, but my tastes have been shaped by a lifetime of easy access to sugar—pour as generously as you like. CORNBREAD & CHILI SKILLET PIE

1 medium red bell pepper, diced 3 large garlic cloves, minced 1 can (15.5 ounces) pinto or black beans 1 can (15.5 ounces) tomato puree 1 cup chicken broth FOR THE TOPPING

2 tablespoons salted butter 1 cup medium-grind cornmeal ½ cup all-purpose flour 3 tablespoons granulated sugar 1¼ teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1¼ cups buttermilk, at room temperature 1 large egg 3 scallions, cut into thin rounds

FOR THE FILLING

2 tablespoons olive or other vegetable oil 1 pound ground beef 3–4 teaspoons chili powder 2 teaspoons ground cumin ½ teaspoon ground allspice 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 medium onion, diced 46 |

YK0926_Food_Weekends.indd 46

Preheat your oven to 375°F and set a rack to the middle position. First, make the filling: Set a 12-inch ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat. Form the ground beef into a single patty about 1 inch thick. Carefully lay it in the pan and let it cook undisturbed until it forms a light brown crust on the bottom, 3 to 5 minutes. Sprinkle the chili powder, cumin, and allspice into the pan around

the meat and let the oil foam for 10 seconds. Reduce heat to medium. Add the salt and pepper and cook, stirring and breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon, until the meat is no longer pink. Add the onion, red pepper, and garlic and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes, then add the beans (with their liquid), tomato puree, and broth. Taste and add salt if needed. Reduce heat to medium-low and let cook, stirring occasionally, while you prepare the cornbread topping. Melt the butter in a small saucepan or in your microwave; set aside to cool. In a medium bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, egg, and melted butter. Add to the dry ingredients and stir until smooth. Add the scallions and stir. Spoon the cornbread topping over the chili in the pan and smooth with a spatula. Bake until the top is golden brown and the liquid is bubbling, about 25 minutes. Serve hot from the pan. Yields 4 to 6 servings. CORN & BERRY PORRIDGE 1½ cups medium-grind cornmeal 4 cups water (or 2 cups water and 2 cups milk) ¾ cup cranberries (fresh or frozen) 1½ teaspoons kosher salt 1/3 cup maple syrup, plus more to taste Your choice of walnuts (preferably toasted), fresh blueberries and raspberries, and yogurt or cream, for garnish

In a medium saucepan, combine the cornmeal, water (or water and milk), cranberries, salt, and maple syrup. Cook, stirring every minute or so to prevent sticking, until the cornmeal is tender and the mixture has thickened, 10 to 15 minutes. Taste and add more maple syrup, if you’d like. Spoon into bowls and top with your choice of garnishes. Yields about 6 servings. NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 2:39 PM

LIMITED TIME!

20 BURGERS

STEAK PureGround Burgers ®

• Made entirely from a single cut of steak • Super-juicy texture delivers a luxurious bite • Perfectly aged 28+ days for exquisite steak flavor • Exclusive to Omaha Steaks

Burger Perfection Collection SAVE 61%

4 PureGround Filet Mignon Burgers (6 oz.) 4 PureGround New York Strip Burgers (6 oz.) 4 PureGround Ribeye Burgers (6 oz.) 4 PureGround Brisket Burgers (6 oz.) 4 PureGround Sirloin Burgers (6 oz.) ® ® ® ® ®

82431KCY separately $202.95 SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE

7999

ORDER NOW! 1.844.682.4089

100%

E IS

MILY PRO FA

OmahaSteaks.com/Flight9312

The best burgers of your life. Guaranteed.

GUARANTEE WILL LOVE

Savings shown over aggregated single item base price. Limit 2. Free standard shipping will be applied to select packages advertised with free shipping. Offer does not include upgraded shipping charges and is limited to the contiguous United States. Standard shipping rates apply per address on all shipments that do not include a package advertised with free shipping. While supplies last. Items may be substituted due to inventory limitations. Some products may not be available for sale in your area. Sales are subject to OmahaSteaks.com/terms-of-use. Expires 11/30/26. | SRC0665

047_YK0926_OmahaSteaks.indd 47

7/17/26 1:59 PM

higher ground A hidden gem in the mountains of western Maine, Bethel feels rough-cut and polished, all at the same time.

he Bethel Village Trails are a perfect morning meander. Just a short pedal from the main grounds of the Bethel Inn Resort, the routes loop and flow, as easy cruisers with golf course views give way to more challenging terrain. The trails wind through the Community Forest, part of a 3,500-acre collection of conserved lands not far from Bethel’s Main Street—time it right, and you can coast back into the village for a coffee and fresh pastry at Gemini Café & Bakery. Then you’re back in the saddle to explore an entirely different set of trails on the other side of town. If there is a New England community that blends town and country better than Bethel, you’d be hard-pressed to find it. Neighboring the White Mountain National Forest and framed by the peaks of western Maine, this community of about 2,500 has long held a special place in the hearts of outdoors enthusiasts as well as

anyone seeking a dose of classic smalltown Maine. “The village is this picture of closeknit living, with plenty of places to go for walks and great views,” says Gabe Perkins, a fifth-generation resident and executive director of the nonprofit Inland Woods + Trails. “And then you venture out just a little bit, and you’re immediately into the rural landscape and pastoral farmland. There’s nothing like it.” Generations of travelers have agreed. City folks made Bethel their summer retreat when trains from Portland and Montreal began stopping here in the mid-1800s; later, the nearby ski resorts Sunday River and Mount Abram built up the town’s winter cred. All the while, hikers and paddlers have been flocking to the region’s peaks and waterways. More recently, Bethel’s kitchens have been catching up to its mountains. While downtown looks much as it always has, the menus behind the storefronts have

I N PA R T N E R S H I P W I T H YA N K E E

Maine_Tourism_Advertorial_0926_Final.indd 48

7/16/26 11:18 AM

Discovery Destinations 4 more Maine small towns with outsize appeal. LUBEC: Perched at the end of an 11-mile peninsula in far DownEast Maine, the easternmost town in the contiguous U.S. packs a lot into its small footprint: a dramatic coastline, a vibrant arts and culture scene, and one of the nation’s most identifiable lighthouses: the candy-cane-striped West Quoddy Head Light. HALLOWELL: Founded more than 250 years ago on the Kennebec River just south of Augusta, Maine’s second-smallest city (pop. 2,600) looks very much as it did when it was the region’s commercial hub. The well-preserved 19th-century downtown is a National Historic District, and its streets are lined with galleries, independent shops, and old-school antiques stores.

quietly turned ambitious. A food trailer not long ago, Le Mu Eats now works out of a permanent space, lacing Southeast Asian flavors into American comfort food. Watershed Wood-Fired Kitchen turns out blistered pizzas and house-made pasta in a snug, one-story clapboard building off Main Street. And after buying and restoring an 1890s barn that formerly housed a dive bar, the owners of Modern Barn are serving up thick steaks and pouring from a wine list twice honored by Wine Spectator—serious enough to draw attention well beyond Oxford County. Bethel’s cultural offerings are keeping pace, too, with artist studios and galleries dotted across town, and an indie theater, The Gem, emblazoned with the state’s largest outdoor mural. The real showstopper is the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum, which launched in late 2019 with a collection that even big cities would envy. Among its treasures: the world’s most extensive display of lunar

and Martian meteorites, five of the largest pieces of the moon, and a 158-carat gem cut from the Rose of Maine, the biggest morganite crystal discovered in the U.S. Yet at its core, Bethel remains an adventure town. The Appalachian Trail runs through this region, which includes what is arguably the AT’s hardest mile. There’s paddling and rafting on the Androscoggin River, and within Bethel’s borders you’ll find some of the most challenging mountain biking terrain in the state. As Perkins sees it, “This has always been an outdoors place, but now it’s a year-round outdoors place.” Whether you’re hiking through wild and lovely nature or sitting down to a dinner that wouldn’t be out of place in Portland, the Bethel experience is as varied as its landscape. Mountains on one side, a Main Street you can walk end-to-end on the other, and not much distance between the two. The only hard part here is leaving. —Ian Aldrich

GREENVILLE: Moosehead is the state’s largest lake, and this town, at its southern tip, is its gateway. A year-round adventure hub— fishing and boating in the summer; snowmobiling and ice fishing in the winter—Greenville is the woods-andwaters escape that has long defined Maine’s inland experience. STONINGTON: Maine’s busiest lobster port still very much moves to the rhythms of its working harbor on the rocky outermost point of Deer Isle. The pretty waterfront village is dotted with restaurants and galleries, while the renovated opera house is a popular stage for live performances.

LE AR N M O R E AT V I S I T M AI N E . C OM

CREDITS: Maine Drone Imaging (aerial); Brandon Pullen (Le Mu Eats); Jerry Monkman/EcoPhotography (biking)

Maine_Tourism_Advertorial_0926_Final.indd 49

7/16/26 11:18 AM

Travel | W E E K E N D A W A Y

North Conway, NH A traditional jumping-off point to adventure, this cozy White Mountains hub coaxes visitors to stay put and dive deep into its small-town appeal. BY K AT R I N A FA R M E R | P H OTO S BY C A I T B O U R GAU LT

50 |

YK0926_Travel_Weekend.indd 50

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/17/26 10:16 AM

OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Biking along the Mount

Washington Valley Recreation Path; vintage gear at the New England Ski Museum; Cheese Louise’s housemade tomato soup with “The Vermonter” (Cabot cheddar and Muenster on sourdough); the White Mountain Hotel & Resort; Old Village Bakery co-owner Margaret Graciano; the League of NH Craftsmen gallery, a fixture in North Conway for over 90 years. THIS PAGE: Seen from Mount Willard, the Conway Scenic Railroad’s Mountaineer train rolls through the fiery foliage display in Crawford Notch.

YK0926_Travel_Weekend_REV.indd 51

7/24/26 10:26 AM

Travel | W E E K E N D A W A Y

Cathedral Ledge sits on the west side of the Mount Washington Valley, with commanding views of the Saco River and open farmland and offering a sweeping panorama of the surrounding peaks, which are currently foliage-spattered in oranges and reds and yellows. The area’s main highway, Route 16, threads right through the village of North Conway, New Hampshire, whose year-round community of just 2,000 people welcomes more than a million visitors each fall. Yet for many, North Conway is simply a place to rest one’s head for the night or grab a bargain at the outlet shops before continuing north. It’s a habit with deep roots: For nearly a century before the first tavern opened here in 1765, European explorers passed through on their way to Mount Washington, the tallest peak in the Northeast. Instead of following the trail of traffic onward, I wondered if, in one weekend, we could find adventure, natural beauty, and creature comforts all within the town limits. The answer, it turned out, was a resounding yes. In recent years, a wave of young entrepreneurs has quietly revitalized what North Conway has to offer. Among them are climbing guides Paul and Lisa McCoy, who in 2022 bought the International Mountain Climbing School from its legendary founders, Rick Wilcox and Bradley White. They’ve added a modern-day sensibility to the business without abandoning the local 52 |

YK0926_Travel_Weekend.indd 52

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/17/26 10:17 AM

PHOTO CREDITS

High above the ground, my teenage son balances on a narrow ledge of granite. I watch from below at a belay station, where ropes and anchors protect me from taking a long fall. It’s midmorning and we are at Cathedral Ledge, a world-class rock-climbing destination, whose sheer 700-foot granite cliff juts up from the floor of the Mount Washington Valley. Years earlier, in my 20s, I spent many weekends exploring this iconic crag and much of the rest of the White Mountains region. While the cracks in the gray rock feel familiar to me, it’s my son’s first time on the ascent; we both can feel the exhilaration as he climbs higher. But even as I urge him upward, I’m already thinking about how good a comfortable bed and a hot tub will feel at the end of the day.

PHOTO CREDITS

opposite: A view of downtown North Conway from Saco River Brewing’s rooftop deck at Norcross Place. this page: Topping out on Cathedral Ledge at the end of a guided climb led by North Conway’s International Mountain Climbing School.

YK0926_Travel_Weekend_REV.indd 53

7/28/26 12:11 PM

Travel | W E E K E N D A W A Y EXPLORING NORTH CONWAY, NH EAT & DRINK Cheese Louise: A family favorite with kid-pleasing grilled sandwiches and, for the grown-ups, an array of craft beers on tap. eatcheeselouise.com Craft NoCo: Tucked down an alleyway, this small cocktail bar with kitchen boasts an impressive list of signature cocktails and mocktails. Instagram Old Village Bakery: Breads, pastries, scones, muffins, and the best chocolate chip cookies—they’re all here in tasty abundance. Locals know to arrive early, or order online in advance. oldvillagebakerynh.com

mountaineering community that built the school’s reputation. Others, like Alec Tarberry, have even grander ambitions. A valley native whose family owns a collection of downtown buildings, including the historic Eastern Slope Inn Resort, Tarberry was 12 when he started working for his father. Today, as president of the Berry Companies, he’s overseen the transformation of a former ski shop into Norcross Place, a cluster of restaurants and bars distinguished by bright red sunshades over the sidewalk seating. This turned out to be the perfect spot for us to start our downtown exploring. We refueled with grilled cheeses at Cheese Louise, where co-owners Bryce Harrison, James Gaudreault, and Ian Lubkin turned a successful food truck into a brick-and-mortar operation, replete with a s’mores firepit and a take-out beer window. The neighboring Saco River Brewing Taphaus tempts passersby with pizza and pub fare along with a pint of Lazy River IPA, say, or Old Course Porter. But instead I opted for a sparkling cocktail from the bar next door at Sap House Meadery. The honey-based alcohol is fermented just south of the valley in Ossipee, where the team infuses it with seasonal fruit, herbs, and botanicals. Fortified, we turned to the shops. Down54 |

YK0926_Travel_Weekend_REV.indd 54

FROM LEFT: Saco River Brewing Taphaus offers a rotating lineup from the Maine brewery located just a dozen miles away; ski boots on consignment at longtime locally owned gear mecca International Mountain Equipment.

town’s independent stores alone are worth the stroll: homemade spices and regional foods at Zeb’s, handcrafted leather goods at Beggar’s Pouch Leather, candles and botanical-inspired gifts at Poppy & Vale, a treasure trove of local history and guidebooks at White Birch Books, and pottery and other handmade wares at the League of NH Craftsmen Fine Craft Gallery. Just south of the Main Street scene, meanwhile, sits Settlers Green Outlet Village, where more than 60 national brands—Cotopaxi, Banana Republic, New Balance, et al.—keep deal hunters coming back year-round. After scoring a pair of trail runners from the Merrell outlet, we met up with friends for a bike ride in Whitaker Woods, where more than 25 miles of trails loop through a densely shaded 171-acre town-owned parcel just a few blocks from Main Street. Leaves shimmered in the sun like gold coins. With more time, we could have continued on to the Mount Washington Valley Recreation Path, which runs for nearly three miles to Settlers Green.

Saco River Brewing Taphaus: At this outpost of the Fryeburg, Maine, original, you can grab a pint, nosh on pub fare, and enjoy the rooftop deck. sacorivertaphaus.com Sap House Meadery NoCo: Come for the drink offerings—especially the mead flight—but stay for the burgers and appetizers (try the sticky pig wings) or hearty entrées such as pasta and chicken potpie. saphousemeadery.com STAY Eastern Slope Inn Resort: The in-town location of this century-old property is a big plus. Accommodations include a variety of room styles, from studios to multibedroom suites, and a property-wide renovation centered on the inn’s outdoor spaces is in the works for 2027. easternslopeinn.com White Mountain Hotel & Resort: Rest and rejuvenate at this majestically sited resort at the foot of White Horse Ledge, with easy access to hiking and

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 10:29 AM

Discover

Historic Charm. Riverfront Setting. A Fall Escape 250 Years in the Making. Walk the same streets that shaped America’s story, in the town that once served as North Carolina’s first capital. Explore a downtown where colonial charm meets riverfront views, and savor a dining scene inspired by the water yet distinctly Southern. As the nation turns 250, there’s no better place to experience it firsthand. Plan your trip to New Bern today.

055_YK0926_NewBern_CVB.indd 55

EXPLORE MORE VisitNewBern.com

7/28/26 12:15 PM

Travel | W E E K E N D A W A Y biking trails in addition to the on-site amenities. whitemountainhotel.com PLAY Conway Scenic Railroad: Choose a short Valley Train excursion for younger or more restless passengers, or settle in for the fourhour Mountaineer ride. conwayscenic.com Cranmore Mountain Resort: The resort’s Adventure Park offers plenty of non-ski, offseason fun for all ages and adventure levels. Plan to carve out at least half a day for your visit. cranmore.com

But dinner, a comfortable bed, and that much-anticipated hot tub awaited at the White Mountain Hotel & Resort. Tucked at the base of the area’s other famed climbing destination, White Horse Ledge, the 80-room hotel has been base camp for adventurers since it opened in 1990. Today the family-owned property offers a nine-hole golf course, heated outdoor pool, fitness center, and pickleball courts—enough for guests to fill a weekend without ever leaving the grounds. While our schedule didn’t allow us enough time to dink and volley, we did manage an unhurried stretch for a three-course dinner at the hotel’s Ledges Restaurant. The charcuterie, locally grown greens, salmon, and house-made desserts were delicious, but the best reward was the view out the panoramic windows. As day two dawned, we were up early for our much-anticipated excursion on the Conway Scenic Railroad’s Valley Train. After taking our seats in the historic 1898 Pullman car, we spent the next hour trundling through the heart of the valley and along the Saco River, all the while getting a spectacular front-row seat to the region’s fall color. Later that afternoon we were on the move again. This time it was at Cranmore Mountain Resort, a family-friendly ski destination 56 |

YK0926_Travel_Weekend_REV.indd 56

With autumn in full swing, a Conway Scenic Railroad train prepares to depart the circa-1874 station for a foliage excursion during the railroad’s busiest time of year.

that puts out the welcome mat year-round with its Adventure Park. Folks looking to relax gravitated to the patio’s Adirondack chairs, while others lined up for the scenic lift rides, mountain coaster, giant swing, Soaring Eagle zip line, and mountain bike park. My son wore a frown as we joined the slowly moving line for the mountain coaster and took our seats in the cart. Then we crested the hill and gravity took over, sending us down through open meadow and birch forests while yellow leaves fell like confetti. The teenage scowl disappeared, replaced by a wide grin. The smiles continued deep into the day as we arrived atop Cranmore Mountain via the ski lift. Before us spread a canopy of color and nearby peaks, including Mount Washington. White Horse and Cathedral ledges glowed from across the valley. Below us, North Conway moved at its familiar autumn pace: hikers unloading from cars, leaf peepers drifting down Main Street, the train on its last run of the day. My son was already talking about coming back. I was already thinking about another hot tub.

International Mountain Climbing School: A variety of packages for any experience level will put you on the famed Cathedral Ledges. Or, go beyond the valley with guided hikes and mountaineering on Mount Washington and the other Presidentials. climbimcs.com Mount Washington Valley Recreation Path: Opened in 2023, this accessible trail is well-loved by walkers, runners, and bicyclists. Insider’s tip: Jump on from the south end of the parking lot at Cranmore Mountain Resort. mwvrecpath.org New England Ski Museum: Interested in learning more about the area’s history of adventure? Then it’s a must-do to visit this branch of the highly rated sports museum, whose flagship location is in Franconia, New Hampshire. skimuseum.org Whitaker Woods: Owned by the town, this 171-acre expanse features a network of old logging roads and improved trails that are easily accessed from behind the former Fuller Elementary School on Pine Street.

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 10:30 AM

TownC

twilight tours

Experience Concord after dark. Guided twilight tours bring our stories to life. CHECK WEBSITE FOR DATES!

Crisp air. Colorful leaves. Incredible history. Explore Concord on foot and discover stories around every corner.

SCENIC WALKS Historic Streets & Local Charm

BRILLIANT FALL Foliage & Crisp New England Air

HATS • LONG SLEEVES SWEATSHIRTS & MORE!

YK0926_Travel_Weekend.indd TownConcord_hp_final.indd 157

HISTORY Around Every Corner

SHOP LOC AL

Support Concord

Visit

Concord.org PLAN YOUR VISIT. FIND EVENTS. BOOK TOURS. SHOP MERCH.

7/21/26 12:08 2:31 PM 7/13/26

Travel | E X C U R S I O N S

Leaf peepers who set up base camp in Burlington, Vermont, have the kaleidoscopic curves of Smugglers’ Notch as an easy side quest.

Peak Experiences BY KIM KNOX BECKIUS WITH JIM SALGE

ong before I became Yankee’s travel editor, I produced some of the earliest web pages about autumn in New England and the joy it invariably brings me. For decades, I even sent pressed leaves out in the mail to readers who requested them. These days, there’s no shortage of fall-foliage info available at a click. But making the most of this season that flares and fades so quickly can still feel like a mystery. That’s why Yankee foliage expert Jim Salge’s weekly leaf reports (newengland.com/foliage) should be your first stop before any outing this fall. And why I’m delighted Jim and I got to hop on the phone for some preseason planning. Listen in. 58 |

YK0926_Travel_Foliage.indd 58

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Jim’s initial recommendation caught me by surprise: Pittsburg. Not the city in Pennsylvania with the “h,” but the town of less than 900 in the northwest corner of his home state. The Great North Woods are likely a long drive from wherever you are, but those miles are worthwhile. Trees here have been under far less stress than in other areas of New England, and the region’s liquid assets—from reservoirs and streams to the four Connecticut Lakes—boost environmental health while photographing like a dream. Lake Francis State Park makes an ideal starting-out point. Expect peak color in late September.

● Side Quest: We’re both keen to check out New Hampshire’s newest “glampground,” Under Canvas White Mountains. Note: Northeast residents save 20 percent when they book with the code LOCAL20 during this inaugural fall season.

VERMONT

The foliage season is long lingering in Burlington, where boating opportunities on Lake Champlain provide 360-degree views deep into October. The city’s investment in public art guarantees you’ll see color in the form of massive murals, particularly along Pine Street and in the Church Street Marketplace area, but it’s tough to compete with Mother Nature as she swoops her brush across the Adirondack peaks on the lake’s opposing shore. My sights have been set on Harborvale since I first saw renderings of this freshly reimagined lake-life escape,

M I C H A E L M AT T I

Two Yankee experts map out a colorful to-do list for this year’s foliage season.

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/20/26 11:23 AM

PHOTOGRAPHER: EMILY ELISABETH PHOTOGRAPHY

Making a short drive from home feel like a world away.

Juniper Studios

Gary Hall

Juniper Studios

J+J Photo

Welcome to Vermont’s most sought after destination wedding venue and 4-season mountain getaway. For any reason, in any season, we deliver unparalleled views and exceptional service.

M I C H A E L M AT T I

M O U N TA I N T O P R E S O R T

Mountain Top Resort | Chittenden, Vermont | 802.483.2311 | mountaintopresort.com

YK0926_Travel_Foliage.indd 59

7/17/26 3:15 PM

Travel | E X C U R S I O N S RHODE ISLAND

where 40 guest rooms have full-wall windows framing this scene, and the eight-mile multiuse path that skirts the shoreline is steps away. l Side Quest: From Burlington, you’re an easy hour’s drive to Smugglers’ Notch, and while Jim admits this twisty route isn’t exactly a hidden attraction, you’d be remiss if you didn’t embark on “fall’s ultimate Vermont road-trip adventure.” MAINE

Maine’s western wilds are a hikers’ paradise, and Jim says this is where he’d be—away from the crowds—if he could take three days off from his job as a science teacher. Flagstaff Lake, just north of the Bigelow range, is alluring to him as a photographer. Dense deciduous forest stalks the shoreline, and gnarly “ghost trees,” drowned when this reservoir was created in 1950, add texture and visual interest. The nonprofit Maine Huts & Trails maintains shoreline paths; maps are available online. l Side Quest: I’ve managed to miss Portland’s signature culinary event, Harvest on the Harbor, for 18 years, so I’m circling the dates (October 15–17) and hoping you’ll be there, too, to savor all the local flavors. Bonus assignment: Do your civic duty and vote for Maine Lobster Chef of the Year. 60 |

YK0926_Travel_Foliage.indd 60

SIGN UP NOW! Get a front-row seat to New England’s fall color show with Yankee’s limited-edition newsletter, delivered weekly throughout the season: newengland.com/fallnewsletter

MASSACHUSETTS

It’s an autumnal wonderland at Tree House Brewing Company’s Deerfield location, where Jim estimates there are 500 Adirondack chairs, and I trust his methodology. The beloved originator of King Julius and Fall Classic has rapidly expanded, even opening a beer garden at Boston’s Faneuil Hall back in May. But this outpost “is where I’m stopping,” Jim says. Earning your fresh pint isn’t mandatory, but there are popular Pioneer Valley overlooks to ascend nearby, including Mount Holyoke, Mount Sugarloaf, and Goat Peak. l Side Quest: Reach the Norman Rockwell Museum by October 26, or miss “American Stories: Revolution to Rockwell”—a landmark exhibition we may not see the likes of for another 250 years. So let’s all make a pact to swing through Stockbridge, where more than 200 works trace the nation’s story through artists’ eyes and lend historical depth to Rockwell’s idealized vision of American life.

Lordy, lordy, look who’s … 300! Trinity Church has watched over Newport since 1726, and the congregation that gathers within this Georgian-style sanctuary traces its founding back to 1698. I’m not sure any community has a more righteous claim to celebrating America 250. The Trinity300 Committee invites everyone to do just that at America’s Birthday Barbecue, a free spread (donations appreciated) from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on September 20. Church tours are available daily through the fall. l Side Quest: If you’ve stayed in Providence before a Patriots game, you may have bumped into … the opposing team! It’s quicker to drive to Gillette Stadium from PVD than from Boston, but consider staying put and joining fans at Rollers Sports Bar & Grill. You can bet I’ll be checking out the fare at this new hot spot from the James Beard–nominated team behind Pizza Marvin and Club Frills. CONNECTICUT

When Jim maps out leaf-peeping musts, the Litchfield Hills always make the list. But don’t sleep on Hartford … especially if you crave “coffee, coffee, coffee!” like Lorelai Gilmore. The new Hartford Coffee Trail runs on the Vibemap app, and you’ll earn points at nine independent roasteries and cafés. Cradle a cup on a walk through Bushnell Park ’s arboretum of more than 400 leafy specimens, or warm up with one after a spin on the 1914 Bushnell Park Carousel. On October 3 and 4, Stars Hollow Saturday along nearby Pratt Street will be back and bigger than ever with a full weekend of Gilmore Girls–themed activities. l Side Quest: When the runway goes up in Putnam’s Rotary Park for the annual Zombie Fashion Show, you’re in for some frightful outfit inspo! Design your own undead look and register for a turn on the catwalk on October 2.

K E I T H J. S M I T H /A L A M Y

Can’t make the big barbecue at Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode Island, in September? Hit the church’s pumpkin patch in October.

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/20/26 11:24 AM

Discover Vacation Homes in Maine c o a s ta l

| l a k e s | m o u n ta i n s

Providing beautiful vacation homes—creating effortless, memorable experiences from the moment guests book until they head home. Use code YANKEE for 10% discount.

207-593-6328

tidestopines.com

K E I T H J. S M I T H /A L A M Y

Gather Here. Wander Here. Belong Here..

YK0926_Travel_Foliage.indd 61

7/21/26 2:34 PM

fall GIF T GUIDE

To advertise please call Steve Hall at 603-933-0426

Come Come Come visitvisitvisit us today! us today! us today!

ANDY OUSE C ANDY H OUSE CC ANDY HH OUSE “Your house for occasions” all “Your house for occasions” all occasions” “Your house for all

Candies! For50 over 50 years we have used only the Candies! For over 50 years weonly havethe used onlyfinest the finest Candies! For over years we have used finest ingredients ourincandies—cream, honey, and and ingredients our candies—cream, butter, ingredients in ourincandies—cream, butter,butter, honey, and honey, blends of chocolates. Calla FREE for brochure. special blends of chocolates. Calla FREE for a FREE brochure. specialspecial blends of chocolates. Call for brochure. Long famous for quality candies mailed all over the world. Long famous for quality candies mailed all over Long famous for quality candies mailed all over the world. the world. yourself or someone special today.today. Treat orspecial someone special Treat Treat yourself or yourself someone today. 292 Street Chelmsford, MA 01824 01824 292 Chelmsford Street • Chelmsford, MA 01824 292 Chelmsford StreetStreet • Chelmsford, MA 01824 292 Chelmsford Chelmsford •• Chelmsford, MA For Brochure Free Brochure Call: Call: For Free Brochure For Free Call: Call 978-256-4061 for Free Brochure Visit our website: mrsnelsonscandyhouse.com

978-256-4061 978-256-4061 > > >978-256-4061 <<<

are HANDMADE using the finest quality ingredients, and are fully cooked before packaging. One dozen delicious pierogi are nestled in a tray, making a one pound package of pure enjoyment! Try any of our popular fillings: Cabbage • Potato & Cheese • Cheese Prune • Potato & Cheese with Kielbasa Blueberry • Potato & Onion Box of 3 Trays - $36 Box of 6 Trays - $56 Box of 10 Trays - $84 Polish Picnic - $57 Polish Party Pack - $84 Kapusta & 5 Trays - $59

Call Toll free or visit our website: 800-743-7641 - milliespierogi.com

Yankee Yankee Ad Ad UMaine UMaine Press Press 7-14-26.qxp_Layout 7-14-26.qxp_Layout 11

New New from from the the University University of of Maine Maine Press Press

carl sprinchorn: a rediscovery Artist Artist Carl Carl Sprinchorn Sprinchorn (1887–1971) (1887–1971) found found his his deepest deepest inspiration inspiration in in the the Maine Maine woods, woods, where where he he captured captured the the lifestyle lifestyle of of hunters hunters and and lumberjacks. lumberjacks. Sprinchorn’s Sprinchorn’s perspective perspective as as aa gay gay man man and and Swedish Swedish immigrant immigrant shaped shaped his his vision. vision. With With over over 180 180 of of his his sketches sketches and and paintings, paintings, this this book book marks marks aa significant significant reevaluation reevaluation of of his his legacy. legacy. 288 288 pages pages $55.00 $55.00 ISBN ISBN 978-0-89101-142-2 978-0-89101-142-2

Order Order through through our our website: website: umaine.edu/umpress/catalog umaine.edu/umpress/catalog or or call call 207-581-1652 207-581-1652

062-063_YK0926_Fall_Gift_Guide.indd 62

7/28/26 11:38 AM

fall GIF T GUIDE ~ Pine Tree Society Holiday Cards ~

Share the spirit of Maine

Sometimes, they find a way to say hello.

“Winter Light” by Sandy Crabtree

Full selection of cards on our website.

“A Fine December Day” by Marieluise Hutchinson

Order your holiday cards today: www.pinetreesociety.org or call (207) 443-3341

100% of proceeds support our programs. Your purchase makes a difference in the lives of Maine children and adults with disabilities.

A quiet reminder that love never leaves us.

This handcrafted Cardinal Door Hanger is designed to bring comfort, presence and a gentle remembrance. SOLID BRASS BELLS

GENUINE LEATHER

NewEnglandBells.com 603-938-2746 MADE WITH CARE BY NEW ENGLAND BELLS

Made in Maine Leather Goods from Rogue Industries

The Rogue Front Pocket Wallet in Moose Leather - $70.

"I've been using front pocket wallets for years. This is by far the best one I've found." - Brent "Well made. Great leather." - William

While the leaves steal the show. it's never too early to start thinking about the holidays!

If you're looking for a better wallet, you've come to the right place. Visit us online or call for a complimentary catalogue of our full line of leather goods.

Let Zeb's make your gift giving easy with our impressive collection of New England made products along with many options for carefully curated. quality made gift baskets.

tel. 1-800-786-1768 web rogue-industries.com

APPAREL GIFT BASKETS BULK CANDY SOAPS & BATH SPECIALTY FOOD CHILDREN'S TOYS

062-063_YK0926_Fall_Gift_Guide.indd 63

603.356.9294

NORTH CONWAY VILLAGE, NH

7/21/26 3:26 PM

Head for the

Hills

64 |

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills.indd 64

7/17/26 10:45 AM

In Connecticut’s Litchfield County, autumn is the invitation—the rest is the surprise. By I a n A ldrich P hotos by Ga br iel a Her m a n

| 65

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills.indd 65

7/17/26 10:45 AM

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills.indd 66

7/17/26 10:45 AM

opposite: Picking out

pumpkins at the 10thgeneration Averill Farm in Washington Depot, one of five charming villages that make up the Litchfield Hills town of Washington. above: Sitting on West

Street in Litchfield across from the town green, the stately granite edifice of the former county courthouse now holds a luxury boutique hotel dubbed The Abner (named for the Reverend Abner Reeve, whose son founded the country’s first law school nearby). previous spread: Near the

Lake Waramaug Country Club, yellow foliage blazes along Ash Swamp Road in New Preston.

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills_REV.indd 67

was just 20 minutes from the trailhead at Mohawk Mountain when the sign for Wright’s Barn & Café in Torrington popped into view. It was a bluebird Sunday morning in mid-September, and I had ventured into Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills for an earlyautumn escape. Oh sure, the region was still a few weeks away from full-blown color, but already the air had a mild bite, and my fall itinerary had filled up without much effort. I had nature preserves to visit, farm stands to explore, and some of the prettiest small-town centers in New England to mosey through. Who had time for diversions? But something about that sign called to me. I swung a U-turn and pointed my car down a quiet country lane that dead-ended in front of a farmhouse overlooking a pretty scene of fields and outbuildings. Inside an enormous retired

dairy barn, owner Jim Wright manned a café counter, leafing through a newspaper as a couple of regulars nursed coffees and traded gossip. Just beyond, arrayed across two long floors, were 40 stations for vendors hawking all manner of secondhand goods, from grandfather clocks and china sets to autumn tchotchkes and toy cars. Soon enough, the big building was reverberating with activity. Rounds of customers and sellers took up their positions, Wright’s wife emerged with fresh-baked muffins and pastries, and the stream of classic rock playing in the background cranked up a little bit louder. It was the kind of scene made for lingering, if you gave yourself permission to discover it in the first place. “It’s off the beaten track,” Wright said, “but I think that’s what people love about coming here.” He might as well have been talking about the region itself, most of which lies within Litchfield County. Bounded by Massachusetts’s | 67

7/24/26 10:36 AM

Berkshire County to the north and New York state to the west, Litchfield packs the one-two punch of being the state’s largest county and its least populated one. Free of major highways and big-box stores, this was the last part of Connecticut to be settled, and the area has never shed its back-roads identity. It is precisely that quality that makes Litchfield County a refuge for locals like Wright who are committed to staying on family land, and for A-listers like Meryl Streep who’ve long appreciated the easy anonymity that comes with rural living. And while an influx of newcomers has helped fuel the opening of several chic businesses here in recent years, there’s something reassuringly unchanging about the Litchfield Hills, where many of the pretty pastures, town centers, and meticulously restored homes predate the nation’s founding. It’s also a reminder that for all the silly talk about Connecticut hewing a little too closely to its neighbor to the west, this area— come autumn, especially—offers as fine and beautiful a New England experience as anything you’ll find in the states to its north.

aving managed to escape Wright’s Barn without blowing a small fortune on vinyl records, I returned to my original mission and made it to the top of Mohawk, a few miles up the road, well before lunch. I’d hiked to the summit, but others had efficiently motored up the auto road. Around me was a scattering of scenes: a young family playfully chasing their toddler around, a pair of 20-somethings sunning themselves on a rock as one of their phones pumped out a tinny Eagles tune, a trio of Harley riders enjoying a late morning snack. What Mohawk lacks in elevation—the mountain rises a mere 1,600 feet—it makes up for in views, which extend deep across the Taconic and Berkshire peaks. It’s also the centerpiece of its namesake state forest, a 4,000acre swath of oaks and maples that stretches through the towns of Cornwall, Goshen, and Litchfield. As spectacular as that forest is, however, it’s just a small piece of the vast collection of conserved properties that blanket the region. The bucolic appeal of the Litchfield Hills owes to the fact that so much of the land here is available for public use—more than in any other part of the state. There’s Bear 68 |

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills_REV.indd 68

Mountain, the state’s highest peak (as well as part of the Appalachian Trail, which runs more than 50 miles through the county). There’s the White Memorial Conservation Center, a sprawling nature preserve laced with hiking and biking trails. There’s Kent Falls State Park, whose frothy main attraction tumbles 250 feet in under a quarter mile. And on it goes. By midafternoon I was on foot again, marching with determination from my car to the cider doughnuts awaiting me at Averill Farm, a longtime family-owned fruit orchard in Washington Depot. It was a fall day in full Kodachrome. Families were picking out pumpkins and mums. Others were laden with bulging totes of pears and apples, while still more hoisted gallon jugs of fresh cider across the grassy parking lot. A woman struggling with a wagonload of fruit caught my attention. “Do you mind giving me a hand?” she asked, before passing me the handle with a sigh of relief. “I probably picked more than I needed,” she said with a small laugh, “but I’ve been looking for Jonathans, and this is really the only place that has them.” She paused and looked at me. “Have you ever had them? They are hands-down the best pie apple, and you have to get them here.” After helping my new friend to the checkout table, I ducked inside the farm stand, where co-owner Tyson Averill was giving a master class in multitasking. Clutching his 1-year-old son in one arm, he shuttled to and from the kitchen with fresh batches of cider doughnuts. It was all he could do to keep pace. On a prime fall weekend, as many as 5,000 doughnuts f ly into the hands of eager customers, along with the orchard’s jellies, cider, granola, and apple butter. Near the checkout, goat-milk soaps were neatly stacked in a display of wooden apple boxes. It’s all vastly different from the farm that Tyson’s ancestors established in 1746. But like the Litchfield Hills region itself, the Averills have adapted to the times without straying too far from their roots: The farm still produces local food, and family still tends the land. “There are people who call up wanting the whole agritourism thing and ask, ‘What else do you have?’” he told me. “And I always tell them that while we may not have things like a playground, we do have more than 100 different kinds of apples, and the orchard is a little

ADD SOME COLOR TO YOUR INBOX Sign up for Yankee’s limited-edition newsletter to join our celebration of autumn in New England, delivered weekly throughout the season: newengland.com /fallnewsletter

top left: Small in size but big on style, the bar at Belden House & Mews draws hotel guests and locals alike with such offerings as the “Oysters and Tiny ’Tinis” happy hour. top right: Seasonal and regional ingredients drive the menu at Community Table in New Preston, which here features Pekin duck from New York’s Sullivan County, an appetizer of local baby carrots, and a cocktail crafted with homemade ramp brine. bottom left: A 1.2-mile raised boardwalk brings visitors up close with the flora and fauna around Little Pond at the White Memorial Conservation Center in Litchfield. bottom right: The Abner in Litchfield is the latest from the boutique hotel group that launched Provincetown’s Salt House Inn and The Brant on Nantucket.

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 10:37 AM

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills.indd 69

7/17/26 10:48 AM

PHOTO CREDITS

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills.indd 70

7/17/26 10:49 AM

PHOTO CREDITS

more open, so people can walk around. It’s simple in that sense, and I think people like that about us.”

quiet dot in the center of the Litchfield Hills, Warren is rural even by local standards. Perched above its neighboring towns, it’s more a constellation of farms and weekend houses than a village in any traditional sense. But there is civic life here, anchored by a 208-year-old Congregational church and, directly across the road, a cluster of pristine white historic buildings whose recent reinvigoration is largely the work of John Favreau, owner and operator of the Warren General Store. I met with Favreau at his store on a warm, cloudy weekend day, as his crew simultaneously recharged from a busy lunchtime crowd and prepared for a catering job that evening. Having climbed the corporate ladder to a fairly high altitude in his previous life, Favreau today wore a baker’s apron and briefly paused before sitting down with me to patiently explain the intricacies of baking focaccia to a young staffer. “It’s nonstop,” he said with a touch of pride, sliding into a seat across the table from me. SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills_REV.indd 71

Favreau’s path to Warren was a happy accident. On a rainy weekend in 2004, he came up from New York City to visit an old friend. On previous trips, he’d become enamored with how Warren evoked the same small-town spirit as the western Massachusetts village where he’d grown up, so on a whim the friend suggested they look at some houses for sale. Before Favreau was back at work in New York on Monday, he’d made an offer on one. Over the next decade, Favreau watched with curiosity as the small group of buildings that served as Warren’s commercial district shuttered and didn’t reopen. “Everything just kept looking more decrepit and depressing,” he said. “One guy owned all the buildings, and at some point he listed the entire town center on eBay.” Favreau’s curiosity eventually turned into action, and by 2018 he’d bought the buildings with the idea of finding entrepreneurs who wanted to fill the storefronts. When nobody stepped up, he did it himself. The nowrevitalized town center is home to a clothing retailer, a liquor shop, and several more businesses. Anchoring the scene is the Warren

opposite, clockwise from top left: Owner John Favreau of the Warren General Store; founded in 1999, Kent’s Morrison Gallery recently debuted a 6,500-square-foot exhibit space with room outdoors to display works such as White Horse, created by Cornwall-based artist Peter Busby; co-owner Natalie Randall at RT Facts Design & Antiques; a postcard-perfect gazebo graces the town green in New Milford, which provided the classicNew-England-small-town setting for the 2002 Adam Sandler film Mr. Deeds. above: Fall spreads its

colors across the shoreline of Lake Waramaug, which touches the towns of Kent, Warren, and Washington.

(Continued on p. 98) | 71

7/24/26 10:39 AM

The

APPLE HUNTERS

New England once grew thousands of apple varieties. A band of devoted detectives is racing against time to find the survivors. B Y S A R A A N N E D O N N E L LY | P H O T O S B Y G R E TA RY B U S

72 |

YK0926_FEA_AppleTrees.indd 72

7/17/26 1:32 PM

OPPOSITE: Todd Little-Siebold

gathers DNA from an apple on the coast of Maine while searching out potential heirloom varietals. A history professor at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, he has spent more than a decade tracking down, researching, and helping to preserve heirloom apples in Down East Maine. THIS PAGE: Thought to have originated on a farm in Minot, Maine, about 180 years ago, the Ben Davis apple was the state’s most important commercial apple during the late 19th century but was later displaced by cultivars like Red Delicious.

| 73

YK0926_FEA_AppleTrees_REV.indd 73

7/24/26 10:55 AM

odd Little-Siebold spends his days off investigating strange apple trees. One October morning, the tree that piqued his interest belonged to a young couple in Penobscot, an 18th-century village along a rocky shoreline of Maine’s Blue Hill Peninsula. The couple had connected with Little-Siebold after hearing about the Drap d’Or de Bretagne, a rare French apple thought lost to history that Little-Siebold and fellow apple hunters found four years ago in a neighboring town. This couple wondered whether their own tree might be another Drap d’Or, or some other missing and special Malus domestica. Little-Siebold was all for it. “My problem is I have AADHD—Apple Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I’m like, ‘Apple! There’s an apple! Let’s go get the apple!’” he says. “It’s addictive. It’s like a treasure hunt every day.” The Penobscot apple tree grew halfway down an embankment along a windy corner of Northern Bay. To get to it, Little-Siebold was led across the couple’s backyard, past a vegetable garden, a swing set, and a dozen or so loudly alarmed chickens and ducks. Along the way, the pair told him how, in the late 19th century, this had been the site of a busy brickyard and port, but by 1920 those industries had died out and a family farm had taken over. “We’ve been calling it the Bayview apple,” the husband said, pointing to the tree in question, growing so crookedly its mop of

74 |

YK0926_FEA_AppleTrees_REV.indd 74

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 10:56 AM

opposite: Fruit from the apple

hunters’ most famous find: a rare Drap d’Or de Bretagne on Verona Island. At the time that Little-Siebold and his colleagues identified the tree—thought to be more than 180 years old—it was the only known living example of the Drap d’Or in North America. this page: Fruit picker in hand, Little-Siebold explores the apple varieties growing around a Penobscot home.

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_FEA_AppleTrees.indd 75

| 75

7/17/26 1:35 PM

tangled branches skimmed the muddy beach, which was covered with tide-flattened sea grass and bruised yellowand-pink apples. “We think they’re really good for sauce and pies, but they’re pretty good for eating, too.” Little-Siebold scrambled beneath the lowest branch and climbed, grunting up the slippery embankment to the trunk, searching for the telltale graft scar that would prove someone long ago had intentionally grown this crooked tree. “I’m noticing broken plates, broken glass,” he called down. “This was the farmer’s dump. A lot of times they’d dump apples and the tree would come up in the dumps.” That would mean this tree is from seed, and not a cultivar at all. Little-Siebold trailed off. A short while later, he reemerged from the canopy, wiping his muddy hands on his cargo pants and tugging thoughtfully at his gray goatee. He plucked an apple from the tree and bit into it. “The first thing I would say is, wow, what a great apple,” he said. He studied the tree again, chewing thoughtfully. This tree could have sprouted from trashed cores, he mused, but then again, farmers often intentionally planted apple trees on the edge of their land, and erosion and storms could just have pushed this one sideways toward the shore over time. He scrutinized the firm white inside of the apple in his hand, the seeds forming a symmetrical oval. And then there was the fruit itself: complex, sweet, finely textured. “I think you almost certainly have a cultivated fruit,” he announced. The homeowners grinned. “And it’s an amazing fruit.” He clipped three leaf buds each from the north and south sides of the tree and put them into test tubes to ship later to apple geneticists at Washington State University. After carefully packing those into his tote bag and filling a paper bag with sample fruit, he pointed to a row of large apple trees on the adjacent property. “Would it be OK for us to look at these, too?” Welcome to the Maine apple hunt: an ad hoc effort to save heritage apples, the rare survivors of a vast and nearly vanished orchard landscape once filled with thousands of varieties. According to a 1905 catalog by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, some 14,000 kinds of apples were grown between 1804 and 1904, mostly in small orchards on land too marginal for other crops. There were apples as small and red as cherries, fruits that were ghostly white and others so dark they looked black, and monstrously pimpled russets. There were others so tart and juicy they tasted effervescent, or left the flavor of banana, coconut, or clove lingering on the tongue. New England in particular had the most diverse and longest history of apple propagation in the country, because colonists here were first to bring trees from abroad, and Maine alone grew more than 600 varieties during this time. Growers named the apples, often after themselves (Gloria Mundi, Carll Apple), their location (Cherryfield, Bethel Belle), or their appearance (Hidden Rose, Blood Apple, Broke Down). 76 |

YK0926_FEA_AppleTrees.indd 76

“These apples weren’t being trademarked; they weren’t even being written about,” says John Bunker, a Maine apple historian who mentors Little-Siebold. “Names were just points of reference. Most of these varieties were hyperlocal, and many of them were never really sold, except maybe on a very limited local basis.” For many of these apples, the only surviving record is in local grange hall registries. And by the early 20th century, as the agricultural market globalized, apples were being bred more for shelf appeal, durability, and transport than for flavor. Federal agricultural agents encouraged farmers to rip out their unique varieties for lucrative mass-market alternatives like Red Delicious, Granny Smith, and McIntosh. This development, combined with the Great Depression and a pair of catastrophic winters, decimated hundreds of thousands of Maine’s apple trees. The few that survived are now reaching the end of their natural lifespan, just as old farms and undeveloped land are disappearing from Maine’s landscape. “If we’re going to save them,” says Bunker, “we have to do it now.”

very apple seed produces a genetically unique tree. Plant a Honeycrisp seed, and what grows will probably look and taste nothing like a Honeycrisp. Even seeds from the same apple can produce wildly different fruit. This genetic diversity from seed makes apples remarkably adaptable: Seeds that take root and survive usually acclimate to their environment. NEWENGLAND.COM

7/17/26 1:36 PM

To replicate a specific beloved apple, however, growers need to take the seeds out of the equation and clone the tree instead, using the ancient practice of grafting: inserting a shoot, or scion, from the original tree into hardy rootstock. In this way, heritage apples survive by generations of deliberate human selection. Little-Siebold grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, “at a time when supermarket apples were pretty uniformly terrible.” His mother used to buy apples by the three-pound bag and they’d sit in the fridge uneaten because the fruit was so bland. But in 1997, he accepted a history professorship at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. He and his family moved into a farmhouse in Ellsworth with a 150-year-old Yellow Bellflower tree across the street, a New Jersey–born cultivar first documented in 1817 with lemon-yellow skin and a pink blush. “I’m looking out my window and I’m thinking, What is this thing?” recalls Little-Siebold. “So I picked some apples, and it turns out they make unbelievable pie.” He started collecting other local apples for cider and went to so many of Bunker’s talks on heritage apples that Bunker “joked that I was stalking him.” Heritage apples opened up what Little-Siebold describes as an entirely new way of seeing the outdoors—not as woods and fields but as a kind of historical record of a more diverse food landscape. He designed a field-based course on apple hunting (he prefers the term “fruit exploration”) using apples as an entry point for SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_FEA_AppleTrees.indd 77

opposite: Apple historian John Bunker harvesting Black Oxfords—an American heirloom variety discovered in Paris, Maine, around 1790—at his homestead farm and experimental orchard in Palermo, Out on a Limb Apples. above: At LittleSiebold’s home in Ellsworth, a trove of antique books, diaries, almanacs, and other records help him piece together the story of heirloom apples across the decades.

learning about changes in farming and loss of biodiversity. In the first class, Little-Siebold holds up an heirloom apple that’s in season and asks, “Why can’t I buy this apple in the supermarket?” His students spend three months trying to answer that question. In 2022, Little-Siebold, Bunker, and their fellow apple hunters registered a monumental find: the Drap d’Or de Bretagne, or “Golden Cloth of Brittany,” one of the rarest apple varieties in the world. This particular Drap d’Or is “the scrawniest little tree,” Little-Siebold says, a hollow, blackened contortion growing on Verona Island, at the mouth of the Penobscot River. But the yellow fruit it bears every couple of years is complex and sweet, still worthy of being “esteemed by the curious,” as prominent English pomologist Richard Weston wrote in 1772. Little-Siebold thinks this Drap d’Or de Bretagne was planted around 1837, when the previous owners, a family of subsistence farmers, bought the property from Revolutionary War general Henry Knox. The heritage apple genome project at Washington State University confirmed the apple’s unique provenance | 77

7/17/26 1:36 PM

by matching it genetically with a cultivar in a French public research institution. At the time, the Verona Island tree was North America’s only known living example of Drap d’Or de Bretagne—a dessert apple first recorded in France in 1628 and since lost even in Europe, save a single tree in a Denmark heritage orchard. (Two more Drap d’Or trees have since been found in Waldo County.) It is believed to be one of the oldest continuously grown apples in North America, and is one of three known ancestors from which many of the continent’s varieties descended. After the discovery, Little-Siebold launched the Penobscot Valley Apple Project, which intends to sample the DNA of about 100 trees from Bucksport to Deer Isle over the next two years to determine whether French settlers there introduced some of New England’s earliest cultivated apples. It’s possible the Verona Island tree arrived through the 19thcentury nursery trade, but it’s also possible it was propagated by farmers from a tree planted in or around Castine in the 17th or 18th century. If this second hypothesis is correct, it may point to a deeper and largely overlooked French influence on North American apple history. While researching a book he’s writing on the subject, Little-Siebold found that the earliest documented orchard in North America was planted by French settlers in Port Royal, Nova Scotia, in 78 |

YK0926_FEA_AppleTrees_REV.indd 78

1608. French settlements in Down East Maine around the same time are also documented, and in 1613, a settlement on Mount Desert Island recorded planting “fruit trees.” “One of the things that’s fascinating is the genetics is telling us that the French signal is really important in early American apples, but people have no idea,” he says. “So part of it is looking for things that people don’t even know we should be looking for, which is these French apples.”

he man generally credited with launching Maine’s heritage apple renaissance is Little-Siebold’s mentor and friend John Bunker. Half a century ago, right before Bunker graduated from Colby College, he and a couple of friends bought a large parcel in Palermo and set about learning to live off the land. He realized quickly that farming in the village of Palermo was a dying art. “When I got here, there were like half a dozen farms left in town,” Bunker says. “And they all shuttered maybe five or 10 years after I arrived. But the apple trees just kept on growing.” Bunker would ask neighbors for their dropped apples, which he’d take home to preserve, bake, and cook with while he learned to grow crops on his own land. The oldtimers taught him where their apple trees came from, how to graft them, how best to eat their fruit. “I was realizing, NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 10:56 AM

these old trees, no one seems to care about them, but these apples are super cool,” Bunker says. “These old trees, they’ve been through everything—waves of browntail moths, 30 degrees below zero, everything. These trees are survivors.” Eventually, an encounter with Ira Proctor, a local farmer known for growing a dark purple apple called Black Oxford, inspired Bunker to begin identifying hundreds of Maine varieties using a method called phenotyping: comparing a fruit’s physical traits—shape, color, texture, flavor, seed pattern, and stem cavity—against historical descriptions and knowledge passed down by growers like Proctor. It’s a heady challenge, and even Bunker, who today is considered one of the top apple historians in the world, is proven wrong by DNA about 40 percent of the time. During the winter, Little-Siebold meets every few weeks with Bunker at his Palermo farm, a sprawling idyll of orchards, vegetable gardens, and weathered outbuildings. The two sit at the dining room table overlooking a backyard duck pond, hunched over farmers’ diaries, grange records, annual reports from the Maine State Pomological Society, 19th-century maps, and tomes with names like The Apples of New York (published 1905), Systematic Pomology (1925), and the seven-volume Illustrated History of Apples in the United States and Canada (2016). They haggle over the features of SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_FEA_AppleTrees_REV.indd 79

far left: A visitor peruses the dozens of heirloom varieties

on display at the Great Maine Apple Day, an annual event held by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association at its 10-acre preservation and educational orchard in Unity. right: An array of fliers at the Great Maine Apple Day invites would-be apple hunters to join the quest for rare fruit. center: This roughly century-old wild apple tree on Bunker’s farm is known only by the nickname Half Moon Tree, otherwise keeping its sweet mysteries to itself.

the mystery apples they’ve collected: the slope of the stem cavity, the shape of the calyx, the color and arrangement of seeds at the core. Occasionally, Bunker’s wife wanders in to cook on the antique wood-fired stove in the adjacent kitchen, wafting sweet and salty aromas into the room. Bunker is turning 76 this fall, with white hair tucked under a ball cap, holes in his boots, and a thin and scratchy voice. Over his 50-year career as an apple hunter he’s compiled a database of his observations of roughly 2,500 varieties of apples. He consults this database to come up with a tentative variety of a mystery apple, comparing his and Little-Siebold’s observations against those logged years earlier by what Bunker jokingly calls “John of the past.” (Continued on p. 106) | 79

7/24/26 10:57 AM

S TAT E O F

80 |

YK0926_FEA_HeartsofPine.indd 80

7/17/26 2:10 PM

PL AY

Two seasons in, Maine’s joyful bear hug of its first pro soccer team shows no sign of letting up. p h o t o s b y m at t r o g n e r

| 81

YK0926_FEA_HeartsofPine_REV.indd 81

7/30/26 10:48 AM

In early spring, Gabe Hoffman-Johnson opened an email from a stranger that made him catch his breath. It wasn’t very long or polished—just a few simple lines—but the sentiment it expressed struck a chord with the native Mainer, who a year before had brought professional soccer to Portland. “I just moved here and your club makes me feel like I belong here,” the note read. “It makes me feel like I’m home.” In the world of professional sports, fans don’t ordinarily heap such praise on a team owner. But then, the Portland Hearts of Pine are no ordinary team. Now in their second season, the Hearts play in USL League One, two divisions below Major League Soccer, and they’ve already earned the kind of devotion usually reserved for more storied franchises. The wait list for season tickets 82 |

YK0926_FEA_HeartsofPine_REV.indd 82

is nearly 7,000 fans deep (about 1,000 more than the official capacity of Portland’s Fitzpatrick Stadium); the tailgating scene rivals what you might find in Foxborough; and the roar of the sold-out crowd at each of the team’s 20 homes games doesn’t relent until the final whistle. “There’s an affinity for this club because it really embodies the spirit of Maine,” says Hoffman-Johnson. “We’re getting mail all the time from fans saying how much joy the club has brought them. I just got a text last week from a friend who said he was in London and saw a guy wearing one of our jerseys. You sort of have to pinch yourself.” The team’s success is anchored in no small part by Hoffman-Johnson’s own love for the sport and for his home turf. A two-time Maine state player of the year at Falmouth High School and later captain at Dartmouth College, he had recently NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 11:07 AM

opposite, from left: Hearts

of Pine founder Gabe Hoffman-Johnson, who credits his love of soccer and community to his parents—one a collegiate soccer coach and athletic director, the other an international peace builder; young fans let off some steam at the Kids Zone during a game at Portland’s Fitzpatrick Stadium. this page, from top: Hearts defender Joshua Drack signs postgame autographs; Mainers’ devotion to their first professional soccer team runs so deep that a club-sponsored permanent-tattooing event last year sold out in a matter of hours. previous spread: Before

every match, fans raise their scarves in unison and sing the club’s anthem, “The Ballad of the 20th Maine.”

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_FEA_HeartsofPine.indd 83

| 83

7/17/26 2:18 PM

top left: To the cheers of more than 6,000 supporters, the Hearts reset after scoring a goal against Greenville Triumph SC on May 23. above: Hearts of Pine

fans walk the talk in tennis shoes bearing the club’s crest, left, and its official motto, “Lead with Your Heart.”

84 |

YK0926_FEA_HeartsofPine_REV.indd 84

started an unhappy career in private equity in New York City when the USL launched League One in 2019. Hoffman-Johnson immediately advocated for a Maine club, and four years later, Portland was granted its team. Today the Hearts are arguably the hottest ticket in the city. There’s the on-the-field action, of course, but also all the other ways the club connects with the community, from running an after-school development program to redistributing secondhand soccer gear throughout Greater Portland. In June, the Hearts hosted a World Cup watch party in which more than a thousand fans

squeezed into Monument Square to watch the U.S. team beat Australia. The success of the franchise has been so complete that in June the Hearts announced they had secured the rights to a women’s team for Portland that will begin play next year. “There’s a fierce love of place here in Portland that you don’t always find in other parts of the country,” says Hoffman-Johnson. “That’s why we always saw this as more of a community project than anything else. That’s why after the game you’ll see the players walking around the stadium, thanking people for coming, giving high fives—that connection is important.” —Ian Aldrich NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 11:09 AM

left: Portuguese midfielder Diogo Barbosa, one of several Hearts players bringing their international soccer experience to Portland, faces off against Triumph defender Patrick Seagrist. below left: A middle

school teacher turned Hearts superfan, Dana Ricker serves as the designated leader, or “capo,” of the club’s supporters as she uses a megaphone to lead chants and songs during each match. below right: Maine-centric

concessions—like the Portland-based mobile raw bar Lady Shuckers, which serves up fresh oysters from a network of women-owned farms—fit right in with the Hearts’ mission of fostering local pride.

GAME ON! Check out the Hearts of Pine in action on Weekends with Yankee’s current season. For details and a station finder, go to: weekendswith yankee.com

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_FEA_HeartsofPine.indd 85

| 85

7/17/26 2:19 PM

TONY LUONG

Novelist Alice Hoffman at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

YK0926_FEA_Conversations.indd 86

7/16/26 3:57 PM

CONVERSATIONS

Alice Hoffman On seeing her best-selling novels adapted to the big screen, the power of fairy tales to get at hard truths, and why she thinks Nathaniel Hawthorne was both a feminist and a hunk.

TONY LUONG

I N T E RV I E W BY K E L LY H O R A N

n Alice Hoffman novel moves like weather— serene one moment, convulsive the next, and as charged with stormy possibility as the warm, thick air of a late summer afternoon. Her fictional realms are narrative particle accelerators, colliding the unfathomable matters of the human heart with the differently unknowable enchantments of spells and witchy intuition. To say nothing of magic. Hoffman escaped a dreary and solitary Long Island childhood by reading, starting with Edward Eager’s seven-book Tales of Magic series, in which even ordinary children in an unremarkable town can experience the shimmering extraordinary. Across more than 30 novels, Hoffman has made such everyday magic a genre of her own—it’s right there in the title of her 1995 blockbuster, Practical Magic. Hoffman has also gone much deeper and, at times, darker, forging a distinctive SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_FEA_Conversations.indd 87

alchemy of fairy tale, realism, and emotional cartography in books as varied as The Dovekeepers, a 2011 novel about the 73 c.e. Siege of Masada, and When We Flew Away, her tender and luminous 2024 prequel to Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. Which brings us to Hoffman’s women. They are sisters, daughters, and widows, seekers on the margins. Their inheritance is pain, but also fortitude. When asked “Why witches?” Hoffman responds, in essence: because princesses don’t have any power. With two much-anticipated Hoffman arrivals this September—The Witches of Cambridge, the first novel in a new series, and the movie sequel Practical Magic 2—we wanted to check in with the author about her writing, New England as a character in her work, and the destiny-shaping turns of everyday magic in her own life. We reached Hoffman by phone at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she’s lived since the 1970s. | 87

7/16/26 3:58 PM

CONVERSATIONS be Jewish, and you could be a writer— that was kind of shocking to me.

Which authors made the biggest impression on you as a young reader?

You’ve written about your father leaving your mother, brother, and you when you were 8, and about the “unhappiness [that] was trapped in the house like a bubble,” as you told one interviewer in 1994. Do you think if you’d had a happy childhood, you’d have become a writer?

I always think that what you read when you’re about 11, 12, 13—those are the books that influence you the most. I read all of Edward Eager’s Magic books. I also read a lot of Shirley Jackson. She really had that ability to combine dark and light and magic and the real world. And I was a huge fan of Ray Bradbury. I was so lucky to discover him. He’s a moral, good writer and he really kind of opens up the world for people. I gather you spent a fair amount of time at the library?

I did. I felt so lucky to be able to have the freedom to take out anything I wanted and to make the kinds of choices at the library that I might not have been able to make in other places in my life. Is there a particular writer who made you want to be one?

Anne Frank. Her diary hugely influenced me. That book let me think that maybe I could be a writer too…. The fact that you could be young, you could be female, you could

That’s a good question. I don’t know because I didn’t have one. So I have no idea what happens when you have a happy childhood. I’d never even thought about going to college. My mother had signed the papers to let me drop out of high school, but I had a great guidance counselor who wouldn’t let me. What happened next?

I ended up at Adelphi, which is a great, great college on Long Island that is open to people who might not otherwise have gone to college. And it was the ’70s, and my brother was living in California, and I thought maybe I should go out there, too, and he said there was a great school out there that I had never heard of, Stanford. I applied, and I ended up in the writing program. And I had a great mentor [the writer and

critic Albert Guerard]. He picked me out of the group because of my writing. He gave me a fellowship so that not only did I not have to pay, but I was paid and I had housing. He completely changed my life and helped me to be published. Sounds like a fairy-tale turn befitting a character in one of your novels.

You know, that can happen. But also I think you have to be willing to say yes. So I said yes to certain things that, because I felt like I had nothing to lose, I figured I might as well say yes. I’m struck by the extent to which a certain fairy-tale quality runs through so many of your books. What is it about the fairy tale as a literary form that appeals to you?

I always felt growing up that fairy tales had the ability to tell the truth about certain kinds of emotional and political things in a way that realism couldn’t. And in certain tragic books and books where the cruelty is unbelievable, it’s hard to talk about these things in terms of realism, so I think that’s what I used the fairy-tale motif for. You certainly don’t turn away from hard things. You have a novel about a young girl with AIDS, At Risk, from 1988, for example. How do you find a way into difficult subjects?

I don’t know if I really can answer 88 |

YK0926_FEA_Conversations.indd 88

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 4:00 PM

COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES (STILL); TONY LUONG (HOFFMAN)

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

that. Talking about process is difficult because it’s very internal. It’s very, in a way, magical. It’s not something that you take apart or look at in that way. I don’t even like to talk about it, to tell you the truth, because I feel like I just don’t want to investigate it. COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES (STILL); TONY LUONG (HOFFMAN)

Can you say more about that?

I was in a PhD program [at Stony Brook University] and dropped out because I felt like the more I was writing, the less I wanted to study literature in a certain kind of way, to take it apart and look into it in a scholarly way. I wanted to let it be more of an art. So you let the ideas come to you, without analyzing where they come from and what they might mean?

Yeah. I mean that happened to me with the black moth that Anne Frank keeps seeing [in the 2024 novel When We Flew Away]. I was on vacation on an island, and there was a gigantic black moth on my cottage door. I found out that it’s called the witch moth. SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_FEA_Conversations.indd 89

Are you serious?

Yes! And the people on the island said sometimes it portends a death. I’m like, well, I’m glad it left my door! So I think you just kind of gather information, and it comes out in different ways. It’s kind of like, how much do you really want to know what’s going on in your subconscious? You want to let it kind of work for you, not examine it. That’s actually a lovely way of explaining your process without wanting to explain your process. Another through-character in your books is New England—specifically, the atmosphere of Massachusetts. Has that been a conscious decision, to tap the rich literary soil around you?

I think most people are affected by the literary history of New England, whether they live here or not. I feel lucky to live here. This is the origin of American literary history. It’s where the original great writers came from, so it’s very interesting to think about that history when you’re working here.

clockwise from opposite, lower left: Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock in a movie still from Practical Magic 2; one of the many editions and reissues of Hoffman’s most famous novel; the author with her Tibetan terrier, Violet (a lifelong dog lover, Hoffman edited the new essay collection The Best Dog in the World).

Which New England writers in particular have seized you?

I’ve written a book about Nathaniel Hawthorne, so I’m interested in him and his whole gang of Concord writers. You’re referring to your 2023 novel The Invisible Hour. You made Hawthorne very hunky and appealing in that novel. I bet he appreciates that from somewhere beyond the grave.

Well, he was pretty good-looking, I have to say. He did write about women in interesting ways. I don’t know if in real life he was a feminist, although it seems to me that he really supported his wife. I think The Scarlet Letter is a really interesting book to have written (Continued on p. 108) | 89

7/16/26 4:00 PM

The

Deep in a Massachusetts forest, a story of time and fragility unfolds.

Old Sugar Maple By Tim Loftus

Illustration by Christian Blaza

met the sugar maple when I was 15. It was the summer of 1977, and I was working for the Youth Conservation Corps: building trails, hauling felled trees from the forest to build walkways over ecologically sensitive areas, planting hedgerows to support bird habitat. Just over the crest of a forested hill in Spencer, Massachusetts, the supervising forester pointed out the oldest tree he had seen in the area. Based on its four-foot-diameter trunk, he estimated it had started growing “probably around 1777.” This tree would have about 200 growth rings, I thought. When I was a Cub Scout, I had learned about tree rings— every year, another annual growth ring is added to the outer layer of wood, just under the bark. When my father cut cordwood for the woodstove, I’d count the growth rings on the stumps to figure out how old the tree was when he had cut it down. One time he showed me the tree ring on one stump from the year I was born: eight growth rings in from the bark toward its center. I had caught the family-history bug, and so my thoughts turned to my two great-aunts, Mayme and Beth, who lived 90 |

YK0926_FEA_MapleTree.indd 90

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 3:47 PM

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2026

YK0926_FEA_MapleTree.indd 91

| 91

7/16/26 3:47 PM

together in the same neighborhood as my family. They were like grandparents to me, and their home was my second home. Sometimes, if I could get them talking about the past, they’d tell me stories of life in the 1890s and early 1900s, before cars, planes, and phones. Before electrical appliances and before indoor plumbing. As children, they had even known some elderly Civil War veterans. And there I was, that day in 1977, standing by a huge sugar maple that was more than twice as old as my greataunts. What other, even older events did this tree “witness” in its life?

hough Spencer was a rural town with dairy farms and vast forests, I didn’t pay attention to trees until a college botany class. I needed to identify and collect leaves from native trees in central Massachusetts. While the first dozen or so were easy to find, the remaining took research into tree habitat, reading topographic maps, and hours and hours of trudging through forests, swamps, and wherever trees grew. I found trees I never knew existed around Spencer. But what I never found was a tree as old, or as huge, as the sugar maple I had met a few years before. There was no road to this tree, just a series of trails, then a long walk through trees and brush. When I visited it, I’d sit under its branches and imagine its birth on some cold March morning so long ago. Not all the ground on this hill would have thawed from its winter sleep yet, and some snow probably still filled the shadowed areas dotting the landscape. But on this southern slope, the soil would have been soft and moist, warmed by the rising spring sun. In this pocket of sunshine and earth, the outer shell of the maple seed had cracked open as the maple embryo pushed from the inside against its protective hard placenta. Through the crack, a small single root had reached into the soil in search of nutrients and water, while the cotyledon, the two embryonic 92 |

YK0926_FEA_MapleTree.indd 92

After decades of natural forest rejuvenation, a small open zone still encircles the old tree ... as if the forest is allowing it to live out its days in peace. leaves full of chlorophyll, had reached toward the sky to harvest the sun’s energy. The seed was no more, having transformed itself into a sapling. Other times, I imagined what the tree looked like in 1789, when George Washington was inaugurated as president of the United States. It would have 12 growth rings under its outer bark. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated during the year this tree added its 88th growth ring. It had 115 rings in 1892 when Beth was born, and 121 rings when Mayme was born. The tree added its 184th growth ring in 1961, the year I was born. I recognized my attachment to the sugar maple during the late 1990s. Perhaps it was from a decade of watching Mayme and Beth become more and more frail, before their own deaths, as their bodies ceased working. My father died. One of my best friends died. The first twinges of knee and back pain in my body were telling me my own parts won’t work forever, either. As I grew older, I visited the tree every few months, sometimes more. I never cut a trail to this tree, preferring to keep it protected from the pocketknives of lovers inscribing their undying devotion to each other on its bole, and to keep irreverent gawkers from partying at its base as if it were some kind of circus attraction. In January 2010 when I visited the tree, I saw a large branch had broken from the top. Rot had started to spread into its trunk,

leaving a few hollowed-out areas. During the ensuing years I continued to hike the hillside, or snowshoe in winter, just to sit with the tree. In early spring a decade later, its earthy-red buds were swelling with life and would soon leaf out. The sugar maple had made it through another winter, although not without losing a few additional minor branches. I sat at its base for a while, listening. From my knapsack, I took out a small wooden flute, one that I often carry with me on my woodland wanderings, and played a couple of tunes for my old friend. Last September the air was hot and humid when I visited again. I was full of scratches, punctures, and prickle holes through my clothes and clear to my skin when I emerged from the protective boundary surrounding the old tree. After decades of natural forest rejuvenation, a small open zone still encircles it. While a few saplings and immature trees have crept in, the older oak, ash, maple, and hickory have respectfully kept their distance. Coarse grasses and blossoming common fleabane, its white petals surrounding yellow button centers, blanketed the ground. It seems as if the forest is allowing the old tree to live out its days in peace. Today the sugar maple has lost every major branch from its once magnificent crown except one. It’s a large branch more than a foot in diameter where it leaves the bole, reaching another 25 feet into the air. A few of its upper leaves have already started to turn red and yellow, the colors of a New England autumn. How long will the hollow trunk be able to hold the weight of the only remaining living part of the tree? How many more growth rings will it know? I promised my old friend that I would keep coming back, more often now, to check on it and see how it’s doing. Before I left I scooped up a couple of its remaining leaves. I carefully pressed them between the pages of my journal, then sat at the base of the old sugar maple tree and listened to its stories. NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 3:47 PM

Transform Your Bathroom and Change Your Life.

Safe Step Walk-In Shower

Safe Step Walk-In Tub

FREE TOILET PLUS UP TO $2,000 OFF

Premium Quality, Style, & Innovation

Professional Installation Included

Lifetime Warranty

Easy to Use

Made in Tennessee

Bubbles, Massage Jets, & More

For your FREE information kit and our Senior Discounts, Call Today Toll-Free

1-800-990-1338 Visit YourSafeStepTub.com

*Offer expires 10/31/26. Free toilet with purchase of a new Safe Step Walk-In Shower or Tub. Not applicable with any previous walk-in shower or tub purchase. Offer available for a limited time only while supplies last. No cash value. Must present offer at time of purchase. Other restrictions may apply. CSLB 1082165 • NSCB 0083445 • 13VH11096000 • CGC1537181 • ROC 312990 • CCB 244331 • SAFESSW784PS • PA127501 • MHIC 134233 • TN 5887 • RL.884533 • RBB.49248 • UT 13229623-5501 • 0826

YK0926_FEA_MapleTree.indd 93

7/17/26 3:30 PM

55+

uss

RE T IREMEN T L I V ING & RE A L E S TAT E

Only a few sites remain!

OceanView at Falmouth is growing! Just minutes from Portland, we oﬀer an independent, accve, maintenance-free lifestyle with a care connnuum that provides peace of mind for the future. Our beauuful 80-acre campus includes a wide variety of apartments and cooages, including an addiional 37 new homes now under construccon. Don’t miss your opportunity to move to OceanView in 2026! Set your own reerement meline by reserving your brand-new apartment. Learn more here: oceanviewrc.com (207) 781-4460

A View of ’ Next What's

In beautiful Camden, Maine, only one community oﬀers adults 55+ a whole new perspective on life, with the ease of maintenance-free living, plus access to an extension of care. Discover Quarry Hill—for your best life today and tomorrow.

Falmouth, Maine

The perfect retirement awaits.

a whole new perspective on life, with the ease of

access to an extension of care.

Apartments & Cottages l Assisted Living l Memory Care

207-301-6116 quarryhill.org

094-095_YK0925_RetireLivingStdSection.indd 94

7/20/26 4:11 PM

Nobody wakes up hoping to move to a senior living facility.

And here’s why.

This industry was built backwards. Built around decline. Built around limitation.

Masonicare is different. We didn’t start there. We start with possibility.

And we back it with something most organizations can’t A full continuum of award-winning care designed to respond to life, not define it. Independent Living that promotes your freedom. Assisted Living when you want support without losing autonomy. Memory Care for the person, not the diagnosis. Care recognized for excellence - connected, coordinated, ready.

That’s the Masonicare difference.

Welcome to Something Better.

094-095_YK0925_RetireLivingStdSection.indd 95

7/17/26 3:39 PM

Blue-Ribbon Buffet (Continued from p. 43) For optimal results, Reena measures her key ingredients by weight, not volume, so grams are included here. Note: Tapioca flour (sometimes labeled tapioca starch) is not the same thing as minute tapioca. Look for it in the baking or gluten-free aisle of your supermarket. FOR THE CRUST

2½ cups (350 grams) all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons (25 grams) granulated sugar ¾ teaspoon table salt 2 sticks plus 5 tablespoons (280 grams) unsalted butter, cold, cut into ¼-inch cubes 5–6 tablespoons very cold water

BONUS RECIPE Amy Leblanc’s Classic Raspberry Jam, a winning recipe at the Common Ground Country Fair in Maine (Sep. 25–27, 2026): newengland.com/fairbonus

FOR THE FILLING

3 cups (350 grams) frozen sour cherries (such as Montmorency), unthawed 2 cups (280 grams) frozen sweet cherries, unthawed 1 cup (140 grams) dried cherries ¾ cup (150 grams) granulated sugar 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 2 tablespoons (15 grams) tapioca flour ¼ teaspoon table salt 1 large egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

Combine f lour, sugar, and salt in a food processor. Add butter and pulse until it breaks down into ½-inch pieces. Add 5 tablespoons cold water and pulse until dough just comes together, adding another tablespoon if necessary. Gather dough into a ball and divide into equal portions (740 grams each), then flatten each into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 2 days. Combine cherries, sugar, lemon juice, tapioca flour, and salt in a large saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the mixture thickens and the cherries have released their juices, 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a 96 |

YK0926_Food_Opener.indd 96

bowl and cool to room temperature. Preheat oven to 400°F. Roll one portion of dough into a 12-inch circle and fit into a 9-inch pie pan. Add the cooled filling. Roll the second portion into a rectangle roughly 11 by 17 inches, then cut into ½-inch-wide strips with a pizza cutter or sharp knife. Weave the strips into a lattice over the filling, press the edges together to seal, and trim any excess. Brush evenly with egg wash. Place on a rimmed baking sheet and bake at 400°F for 20 minutes. Shield the crust edges with foil, then continue baking until the filling bubbles actively in the center and an instant-read thermometer inserted through a lattice gap reads 212°F, 40 to 60 minutes more. Cool completely on a wire rack before cutting, at least 3 hours. Yields 8 to 10 servings. BREAD AND BUTTER PICKLES Cook: Lydia Larocque, Tunbridge, VT Fair: Tunbridge World’s Fair, VT (Sep. 17–20, 2026)

Twelve-year-old Lydia and her 14-yearold sister, Lily, get their inspiration from their family’s farm, where they help raise Blonde d’Aquitaine cattle and produce maple syrup. The girls are

very active with 4-H, particularly the working steer program, and submit their homegrown vegetables, poultry, and cattle at many local fairs—but their hometown one is their favorite. Lydia got this pickle recipe from her aunt, Angie Poulin, and won a blue ribbon in the home canned goods category. 4 quarts cucumbers (about 6 large cucumbers), halved and sliced 6 medium onions, halved and sliced 3 cloves garlic, minced ½ cup canning salt 4 cups white vinegar 4 cups sugar 2 tablespoons mustard seed 1 teaspoon celery seed 1 teaspoon turmeric

Combine cucumbers, onions, salt, and garlic and let sit for 1 to 2 hours. Rinse well and set aside to drain. In a large pot, combine vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric and bring to a boil. Add cucumber mixture and heat through, about 3 minutes—do not return to a boil. Ladle into hot sterilized jars, leaving a 1/2-inch headspace at the top, and seal in a hot-water bath for 10 minutes. Yields about 4 quarts. NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 3:41 PM

North Conway | Your White Mountains Escape Experience AAA’s newest 4-Diamond Resort

e. g a i l o F e h t r o f Come on. diti Stay for the Tra

NORTH CONWAY, NEW HAMPSHIRE

• an

n i v e r s a ry

•

1926-2026

800-533-6301 whitemountainhotel.com

1-833-STAY-ESI • NORTH CONWAY, NH • WWW.EASTERNSLOPEINN.COM

Bring A Friend NOVEMBER 6 — 11, 2026

RUSTIC, HEARTY, AND FULL OF FLAVOR Our menu is crafted to satisfy every appetite.

Bring A Friend is New England’s biggest shopping event featuring tax-free shopping, lodging specials, daily in-store events, retail discounts, live entertainment, thousands of dollars in giveaways, and memories with friends.

LUNCH AND DINNER, 7 DAYS A WEEK 2344 WHITE MOUNTAIN HWY NORTH CONWAY, NH (603) 356-7696 • MUDDYMOOSE.COM

YK0926_Food_Opener.indd 97

Daily schedule & details at settlersgreen.com/bring-a-friend

7/22/26 2:08 PM

Head for the Hills (Continued from p. 71) General Store, which, on top of serving up sandwiches and coffee, reflects Favreau’s own personal tastes. There are specialty pastas and sauces from Philadelphia; the croissants are made from dough that comes in from Paris; a lineup of specialty nonalcoholic wines hails from Vermont. The store roasts all its own meats. Come the holidays, Favreau hosts a special caviar program. “I’m fussy, and I don’t want to carry anything I wouldn’t eat,” he said. Favreau, who has lived in cities around the globe, has found something unique in Warren—something he didn’t have in places like London, Paris, and Sydney. “Ninety percent of the customers who walk through the door, I know by name,” he said. “Whether it’s one of the local contractors, a hedge fund manager, or a federal judge, we’ve got all walks of life here, but it’s a real community.”

n some places, you have to go hunting for scenic drives. In Litchfield County, they’re just part of the commute. Driving through Sharon, I meandered past stately farms and rolling pastures. On my way into New Preston (after stopping for an impromptu glass of wine at Hopkins Vineyard), the road led me around beautiful Lake Waramaug, the second-biggest natural lake in the state. In the woodlands of Roxbury, I took my time on a winding road that brought me past the family home of Arthur Miller, where he and Marilyn Monroe escaped after announcing their engagement in 1956; from there it was a short jog to a quiet four-way intersection, site of a wide-open stretch of meadow and big sky that looked like something in the Midwest. It seems all roads in the Litchfield Hills lead to somewhere worth stopping—and notably, many of them lead to the town of Litchfield, the county seat. History’s spotlight shines bright here. Formerly the home of the Potatuck tribe, Litchfield was incorporated in 98 |

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills_REV.indd 98

While the iconic 1829 First Congregational Church of Litchfield might look as though it has stood on the town’s green forever, it has a few miles under its belt. The Greek Revival gem was deconsecrated and moved around the corner to make way for a Gothic-style replacement in the 1870s, but as part of the Colonial Revival movement that swept New England soon after, the building was brought back, reconsecrated, and restored to its former glory in 1929–1930.

1719 and quickly became an important stopping point between New York and greater New England. It served as a supply depot for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and in 1780, after meeting with French allies in Hartford, George Washington spent the night here. The country’s first independent law school was established in

Litchfield, which is also the birthplace of Harriet Beecher Stowe. But even while anchored by such history, Litchfield has never been afraid of a little updating. Walk down West Street on a Saturday morning and you’ll see places like R. Derwin, which has been draping its clientele in Scottish and Italian NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 10:48 AM

ISAAC SHEFFIELD Portraits from New London’s Whaling Era

Isaac Sheffield, Portrait of Capt. Benjamin R. Latham, oil on canvas, ca. 1840. Museum purchase, 1964.246.

Celebrating 26 Years! • AWARD-WINNING CRAFT BEER • SCRATCH KITCHEN • BEER GARDEN • TIKI BAR • LIVE MUSIC • FAMILY FRIENDLY

September 12 – January 3

Lyman Allyn A R T

M U S E U M

625 Williams Street • New London, CT lymanallyn.org • Exit 83 off I-95

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills.indd 99

Scan for our menu:

3378 White Mountain Hwy, North Conway, NH 603-356-6381 • www.moatmountain.com

7/20/26 5:15 PM

cashmere since the 1980s, and Jeffrey Tillou Antiques, whose three floors of 18th- and 19th-century Americana has drawn serious collectors to Litchfield’s town green for more than 30 years. Alongside them, though, is an ambitious wave of newcomers: Westerlind, offering Nordic-inflected apparel from Swedish designer Andrea Westerlind; Milton Market, which House Beautiful named one of the best 25 home stores in the country; and Sister Parish Design, the legendary interior brand that dressed the Kennedy White House, which in 2022 chose Litchfield for its first brick-and-mortar location anywhere in the world. The lodging scene has enjoyed its own revival, with three boutique hotels opening in just the past two years. There’s the intimate Lost Fox Inn, the design-forward Belden House & Mews, and then perhaps the most ambitious of the trio: The Abner, a 20-room downtown hotel in the historic Litchfield County Courthouse, which was shuttered in 2017. When questions arose about the 1890 building’s next chapter, David Bowd and 100 |

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills_REV.indd 100

A magnet for the breakfast and lunch crowds on Kent’s Main Street, the bakery-café Wilson’s by High Watch blends handcrafted local food with a heartfelt mission to employ people in addiction recovery and help them embark on a new life.

Kevin O’Shea, the forces behind the Provincetown-based Salt Hotels collection, provided the answer. The result for travelers is a welcoming, one-of-a-kind landing spot. The in-house restaurant (The Courtroom) packs a bistro vibe; the rooftop bar (Verdict) serves up specialty cocktails and sweeping views of its hometown. During my first night at the hotel, I rode the elevator with an older man who had worked as a local sheriff ’s deputy for years. “It’s strange to be back,” he said, chuckling softly. “I’m gonna guess the clientele is a little nicer these days.” Yet beyond all that recent polish, Litchfield remains in its bones a delightful small town. Beneath the First Congregational Church on the green, I discovered a used bookshop that sprawls through the basement and easily spent a couple of enjoyable hours there. On my final night I had a memorable last-minute dinner at The Village

Restaurant, where I chowed down on mac and cheese to the sounds of ’80s rock as the serving crew wrapped up the night with a skip in their step. I couldn’t leave the Litchfield Hills, though, without stopping in the town that Yankee has more than once crowned New England’s best fall foliage town: Kent. Here, the heart of the leaf-peeping experience lies beyond the leaves—in farm stands and covered bridges, waterfalls and antique stores. Kent packs these things in abundance. After an early-morning scamper up the trail along Kent Falls, I landed downtown and settled into a table at Wilson’s by High Watch, where I savored a double-shot iced dirty chai and a thick serving of avocado toast. Beneath Wilson’s hipster vibe is a unique core mission: Founded by the nearby High Watch Recovery Center, the bakery-café employs recent alumni to help them relaunch their lives, free of substance addiction. The coffee is NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 10:49 AM

POLAND SPRING RESORT

Follow the Faerie House walking trail and marvel at the artistry and magic of over two dozen pint-sized dwellings. Family fun all month long.

MORE THAN A HOTEL

a perfect yet affordable getaway!

Choose from our three inns or twelve charming cottages and treat yourself at our two delicious restaurants. Explore our 500 acre playground! Play a round on our 18-hole Donald Ross golf course, enjoy our pickleball and grass tennis courts and so much more!

SEPTEMBER 26 to NOVEMBER 1

To ﬁnd out more, visit our website or scan the QR code here!

96 Lyme Street

207-998-4351 polandspringresort.com

Old Lyme, Connecticut Exit 70 off of I-95

visit

FloGris.org

860.434.5542

So many reasons to visit New England’s largest living history museum this season. Check our calendar of events online for details and tickets.

Plan your visit at OSV.ORG

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills.indd 101

7/20/26 5:16 PM

excellent, the breakfast sandwiches are robust, and there’s a generous spirit to the place that makes you want to linger long after you’ve finished your order. When I finally did leave, I headed to Kent Barns, an outdoor mall that manages to do the near-impossible work of appealing to even a nonshopper like me. I eventually made my way into RT Facts Design & Antiques, where owners Natalie and Greg Randall oversee a large showroom that beautifully displays a rotating lineup of reclaimed

and remade furniture from their manufacturing studio down the road. The Randalls’ story is a familiar one around here. They’d poured sweat and time into making a life in New York City, then fell in love with the possibility of a different, quieter reality in this part of Connecticut. “This is where a lot of designers end up,” Natalie told me. “There’s a real intellectual crowd here with sophisticated tastes. But it’s also real country—you really can’t get here from there.”

And yet every fall, leaf peepers find their way here anyway. In a few weeks, when the foliage hits peak, Main Street will be packed with cars and foot traffic—a scene I could easily picture as I wandered through town, perusing new titles at House of Books and seriously considering getting my cards read at Tarot in Thyme. I needed to leave for home. But there were diversions everywhere, and I’d long since stopped pretending I shouldn’t make time for them.

Litchfield Hills: The Essentials EAT Arethusa al Tavolo, Bantam: The fine-dining star in Arethusa Farm’s food ventures, this localcentric restaurant is inspired by flavors from its home turf. Be sure to stop by the neighboring dairy bar for ice cream. arethusaaltavolo.com Community Table, New Preston: Don’t let the casualness of this bistro deceive you: Some of the best food in the region is served right here. Monday’s “Burger Night” is always worth a trip. communitytablect.com Hopkins Vineyard, Warren: Thanks to its next-door neighbor, Lake Waramaug,

Hopkins Vineyard enjoys a special microclimate that extends its growing season and nurtures grapes that normally falter in the Northeast. The views aren’t bad, either. hopkinsvineyard.com Kent Falls Brewing Co., Kent: Connecticut’s first farm brewery, Kent Falls grows its own hops on land that has been continuously farmed for more than 250 years. Stop by the taproom— the beautiful setting itself is intoxicating. kentfallsbrewing.com Warren General Store, Warren: Hard-to-find gourmet delicacies and stick-to-your-ribs sandwiches are all on

Wright’s Barn & Café, Torrington

offer at this downtown gathering spot. warrengeneral.com Wilson’s by High Watch, Kent: The good vibes—and the excellent coffee—flow from a deeper mission: Wilson’s was founded by the adjacent High Watch Recovery Center and employs its alumni as part of their reentry into sober life. wilsonsbyhighwatch.com

SHOP

Averill Farm, Washington Depot

102 |

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills.indd 102

Jeffrey Tillou Antiques, Litchfield: In a region beloved for its antiquing scene, Tillou stands out, with three expansive

floors of 18th- and 19th-century Americana right on Litchfield’s famous town green. tillouantiques.com Lakeville Books & Stationery, Lakeville: While the cooking section is impressively deep, books of all flavors are celebrated at this Main Street store, opened in 2025 by a family with longstanding local ties. lakevillebooks.com Milton Market, Litchfield: Tucked away in charming Cobble Court, a former 19th-century livery stable, Milton

Market offers a range of home and personal accessories smartly curated by owner Martha Fish. miltonmarketct.com RT Facts Design & Antiques, Kent: RT Facts’ beautiful showroom runs 7,000 square feet, and its foot traffic has included Martha Stewart and Shonda Rhimes, among other celebs. rtfacts.com Workshop, Litchfield: Since opening her shop in 1970 as a 19-year-old, owner Janus Nelson has become a regional style guru of women’s high

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/17/26 10:52 AM

Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont examines how America’s beloved illustrator shaped an enduring vision of Vermont—and by extension the nation, during

Elegant Stays & Culinary Excellence. Authentic hospitality in the heart of Vermont.

his formative years living and working in Arlington, Vermont, from 1939 to 1953. On view through October 25. Supported by SHELBURNE, VERMONT

Woodstock, Vermont | woodstockinn.com

VERMONT 

INN to INN WALKING TOUR



Sprawling across two floors and 7,000 square feet, get lost in centuries past at our Bellows Falls, Vermont, shop. Our floors are packed with a diverse range of vintage furniture, from colonial through Victorian, antique hardware, unique restored lighting, and heirloom and estate jewelry. Explore our natural history shop to discover gems, minerals, and curiosities gathered from around the world.

MAP ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL BYERS

WALK FROM INN-TO-INN AND SEE VERMONT AT 10 MILES A DAY ■ We transport your bags to the next inn.

■ Walking routes are on backcountry gravel roads. ■ If the length of the route is too much for you,

we are happy to give you a ride part way. ■ Drive the route if you wish . . . we’ll give you touring info.

Open daily from 10am–5pm 5 The Square • Bellows Falls, VT 05101

www.VermontInntoInnWalking.com • 833-Inn-2-Inn (833-466-2466)



YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills.indd 103

7/20/26 5:16 PM

fashion, carrying brands like Bryn Walker and Issey Miyake. workshop onthegreen.com Wright’s Barn & Café, Torrington: Antiques and other collectibles, freshly baked goods, and plenty of groovy tunes are all part of the welcoming scene inside this retired dairy barn. wrightsbarnct.com

PLAY Averill Farm, Washington Depot: Get your fill of all the tastes of fall—apples, cider, cider doughnuts—at this 10th-generation family orchard. averillfarm.com

Eric Sloane Museum & Kent Iron Furnace, Kent: View artist and author Eric Sloane’s collection of early American hand tools, and study his artwork and his paint-spattered easel in his re-created studio. There’s also a historic iron furnace on-site. Facebook Kent Falls State Park, Kent: If you’re looking for a short walk with stunning views, try the nearly 1-mile out-andback Kent Falls Steps Trail, which takes you through a covered bridge to a 250-foot cascade. Picnic tables make this an ideal spot for a family gathering. ctparks.com Mohawk Mountain, Cornwall: Panoramic views greet hikers and drivers atop Mohawk’s

Winvian, Morris

accessible summit. ctparks.com

Cornwall Covered Bridge, West Cornwall

White Memorial Conservation Center, Litchfield: Four thousand protected acres, including extensive trails for hiking, biking, and horseback riding, are ripe for exploring. Don’t skip the Nature Museum, which tells the story of this vital wildlife sanctuary. whitememorialcc.org

Mayflower Inn & Spa, Washington: Amid 58 acres of landscaped gardens and woodlands, this Auberge Resorts property delivers the full luxury treatment: spa, fine dining, and rooms that are both grand and comfortable. auberge.com

STAY The Abner Hotel, Litchfield: Even though some of the accommodations are set in former judge’s chambers, there’s nothing stodgy about this courthouse turned hotel. The on-site restaurant is a hub of conviviality, while the rooftop bar will have you deliberating over which well-crafted cocktail to swizzle. theabnerhotel.com Belden House & Mews, Litchfield: Set

104 |

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills_REV.indd 104

Lost Fox Inn, Litchfield: A compound of three vintage buildings— including a tavern dating to 1745—Lost Fox Inn offers about a dozen boutique rooms and a highly rated in-house restaurant. lostfoxinn.com

on three acres among the historic mansions of North Street, the recently opened Belden marries its main building’s historic heritage with plenty of upscale panache. beldenhouse.com

Fife ’n Drum, Kent: This homey inn comprises 10 moderately priced rooms on two floors. Decor varies, but all have been comfortably and thoughtfully furnished. fifendrum.com

Winvian, Morris: Just a few miles south of Litchfield and adjacent to the White Memorial Conservation Center, this posh rural retreat touts some of the most unusual accommodations in New England: 18 themed cottages, including a treehouse and a beaver lodge. winvian.com

C O U R T E S Y O F W I N V I A N (C O T TA G E ); C O R E Y H E N D R I C K S O N ( B R I D G E )

Cornwall Covered Bridge, West Cornwall: A favorite subject for photographers, one of the last covered bridges in the state spans 172 feet over the Housatonic River. cornwallct.org

NEWENGLAND.COM

7/24/26 10:51 AM

C O U R T E S Y O F W I N V I A N (C O T TA G E ); C O R E Y H E N D R I C K S O N ( B R I D G E )

EXPERIENCE AN AUTHENTIC NEW ENGLAND FALL PYO Apples & Pumpkins Cider Donuts | Country Store Hard Cider | Live Music

The Kent Collection, in the picturesque village of Kent, CT , welcomes overnight visitors to immerse themselves in the charm of our three impeccably restored luxury properties. SAVE 10% WITH CODE: YANKEE10

860-592-0042 | KENTCOLLECTION.COM Valid for stays through March 31, 2027. Subject to availability.

PLAN YOUR VISIT: REDAPPLEFARM.COM Shop online with code YANKEE for 10% off

Seacoast Artisans 27th Annual Holiday Fine Arts & Craft Show

One Gift Card.

Endless Escapes.

ONE DAY ONLY SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2026 10:00 am — 4:00 pm

at Great Bay Community College

320 Corporate Drive Pease Trade Port, Portsmouth, NH Admission $8.00 Children 14 & under FREE

seacoastartisansshow.com

603-431-8531 2026 Partner Nonprofit

Newport Harbor Island Resort

GIVE THE GIFT OF A NEW ENGLAND ESCAPE

Use code FALL and get a $20 BONUS FOR EVERY $100 in gift cards purchased.

Redeemable at 350+ inns and resorts across New England.

NewEnglandInnsandResorts.com 603-964-6689. Promo cards valid for 1 year. Purchased cards never expire. Not valid for ecards.

YK0926_FEA_Litchfield Hills.indd 105

7/21/26 11:11 AM

The Apple Hunters (Continued from p. 79) In his 2019 book, Apples and the Art of Detection, Bunker compares hunting heritage apples to the work of Sherlock Holmes, who famously called solving mysteries “the art of detection.” At Maine’s Common Ground Country Fair and the Great Maine Apple Day, Bunker lectures on historic fruit and hands out “WANTED ALIVE!” fliers with drawings and descriptions of a few dozen northern New England varieties he and his colleagues most hope to find: Wanted: Golden Pippin (possible known alias, Allen). Last known sighting: Washington County, c. 1886. Any information that leads to the rescue and revival of this apple—or any other really old tree—will be greatly appreciated. Strangers line up with bags of apples for him to examine. If they can’t find him in person, they mail him boxes of fruit or leave apples on his car or doorstep in Palermo. “People care about the

106 |

YK0926_FEA_AppleTrees_REV.indd 106

old apple trees, but they don’t know that anybody else cares,” Bunker says. “I’ve felt like it’s my responsibility, my opportunity, to put myself out there at fairs, at lectures, at book signings, anywhere someone can see that someone cares.”

ittle-Siebold can pack as many as half a dozen apple hunts into one day, leaving just after dawn with a tote bag filled with sample tubes, a French pocket knife, and an 1885 Maine atlas. Most of the trees he looks at turn out to be seedlings or common varieties like McIntosh, but every now and then he finds what he calls the “really obscure, rare” ones. “What I’m focused on is preserving old cultivars,” says LittleSiebold. “Part of this is about memory and lived experience. But it’s also about many people in Maine, I think, getting back to the land. They have these apple trees, and they feel sort of compelled to be stewards.” Each year, Little-Siebold, Bunker, and the dozen or so other volunteer apple hunters in Maine send samples from up

to 40 promising trees to the Washington State DNA lab. The ones confirmed as rare are then grafted onto rootstock at the Maine Heritage Orchard in Unity, which Bunker founded as a living archive in 2012. So far, there are about 300 local heritage varieties in the orchard, and over the past six years DNA testing has helped correct about a dozen misidentified varieties. Back in Penobscot, Little-Siebold will spend four hours looking at apple trees. He traverses backyards, bushwhacks through woods, slides down into gullies, eating the apples he finds along the way. Since identifying the Drap d’Or on Verona Island—a tree he and other apple hunters had known of for nearly 20 years before examining it—Little-Siebold worries he might overlook another important apple. “What keeps me up at night is, I’m running through my head, Could I have passed by one of the apple trees I’m looking for?” By lunchtime, the sea breeze is rippling the bay and a deeper chill has settled in, but Little-Siebold is still going. Along the way, he finds lots of McIntosh, one dark red apple that could be a rare heritage variety called Blue Pearmain or just an unusual McIntosh, and a heritage apple with a vertical suture line called Tolman Sweet. He tastes a cherry red apple so sugary it seems candied, seedlings so bitter growers call them “spitters,” and a pale yellow apple with flavors of sage and onion. Little-Siebold has been grinning all the while, sometimes giggling, and his cheeks are red from the cold. “Once you begin, you’ll see them— apple tree, apple tree—you’ll see them everywhere,” he says. At the end of the visit, his hatchback is packed with paper bags of fruit, with placeholder labels like “Candy Apple” and “Turkey Soup.” In the coming weeks, he’ll bring all of these bags to Bunker at his farm to try to identify before sending samples to the Washington State lab to see if a variety in their genealogy matches. “The likelihood that we have found a lost cultivar today is pretty high,” he says, slamming the trunk shut. “Some of this fruit is amazing.” NEWENGLAND.COM

7/21/26 2:23 PM

WILL MOSES LL MOSES 2027

CALENDAR

CALENDAR 2019 OSES

WILL M

t Calendar

CALENDAR 2019

O BO KS

al en da

$17.50

LOCH AT GLENCOE

June

OSES

dar

2018 Calen

t Calendar

Folk Ar

$15.50

2012

S U N D AY

M O N D AY

MAY

T U E S D AY

W E D N E S D AY

T H U R S D AY

F R I D AY

S A T U R D AY

JULY

6 13 20 27

7 14 21 28

1 8 15 22 29

2 9 16 23 30

3 10 17 24 31

4 11 18 25

5 12 19 26

1 8 15 22 29

2 9 16 23 30

3 10 17 24 31

4 11 18 25

5 12 19 26

6 13 20 27

7 14 21 28

Full Moon

7 Flag Day

Last Quarter Moon

Father’s Day

13 Summer Solstice

New Moon

LOCH AT GLENCOE

St. Jean-Baptiste Day - Québec

BOOKS $18.99

ks,

20 27 C

WILL M

$17.99

OKS

Folk Ar

June

dar

2018 Calen

$15.50

First Quarter Moon

$17.99 M O N D AY

MAY

T U E S D AY

W E D N E S D AY

T H U R S D AY

F R I D AY

S A T U R D AY

JULY

6 13 20 27

7 14 21 28

1 8 15 22 29

2 9 16 23 30

3 10 17 24 31

4 11 18 25

5 12 19 26

1 8 15 22 29

2 9 16 23 30

3 10 17 24 31

4 11 18 25

5 12 19 26

6 13 20 27

7 14 21 28

$18.99

2012

S U N D AY

Full Moon

7 Flag Day

Last Quarter Moon

Father’s Day

13 Summer Solstice

New Moon

St. Jean-Baptiste Day - Québec

First Quarter Moon

ARDS C CARDS $15.25 per$17.25 box of per 24 box of 24

Note, & orChristmas Bewitching Cards AssortedChristmas, Notes, Bewitching Cards

14" x 20" $165 R D A S Back to School C

PUZZLES Thanksgiving Snows

$15.25 per box of 24 OSESr Flye LM Assorted Notes, Bewitching W &ILChristmas Cards lock O’C

Sunflower Bay Print

Thanksgiving Snows

$145

Butt L MO ernu SE t Be S nd

WIL

Butt L MO ernu SE t Be S nd

LMT. ck NEBO GALLERY WIL O’Clo Five

WIL

Five

“Art to warm S your heart and home”

SE MO Flyer

$20.25 each 1000 pcs.

Z PUZ LES

60 Grandma Moses Rd. P.O. Box 94, Eagle Bridge, NY 12057

1-800-328-6326

$17.75 each Salem 16921000 pcs.A Day at the Beach

FREE color catalog is available featuring Will Moses limited edition Folk Art Prints, Books, Puzzles, Cards & More!

Z SNEW PUZZLE PUZ LEPOSTER

VISA MASTERCARD AMERICAN EXPRESS PROMPT DELIVERY SATISFACTION GUARANTEED

$17.75 each 1000 pcs.$38.00

Visit our website: www.willmoses.com

Water Witches Parade

WILL MOSES Salem 1692

Girls Night Out

NEW PUZZLE

WILL MOSES MT. NEBO GALLERY

Salem 1692your heart and home” “Art to warm

60 Grandma Moses Rd. White Creek Sunrise School Picnic Eagle Bridge, NY 12057 FREE color catalog is available featuring Will Moses limited edition Folk Art Prints, Books, Puzzles, Cards & More! VISA • M/C • DISC • AMEX • PROMPT DELIVERY • SATISFACTION GUARANTEED Poster

Country Sampler Ad _8x10.75_g.indd 1

1-800-328-6326 • www.willmoses.com

YK0926_FEA_AppleTrees_REV.indd 107 MtNebo_0926_fp.indd 1

Poster

$38

7/11/18 7:39 AM

7/21/26 2:21 PM 7/20/26 4:26 PM

Conversations (Continued from p. 89) at that time, and to be written by a man. It’s kind of a very feminist book. Another writer who has inspired you is Emily Brontë. What is it about Wuthering Heights that appealed to you so much that, 150 years after its publication, you wrote a novel inspired by it, Here on Earth?

I love Wuthering Heights. I think it’s just the best psychological novel ever written, maybe the best novel ever written. Here on Earth is kind of a modern version of it. When things are written by women, and love is part of the story, people tend to see it as a romance, which Wuthering Heights definitely is not. It’s many things. That’s what’s so great about it—it’s a mystery, it’s gothic, it’s a romance, it’s historical. It’s everything, and it’s just so brilliant and beautiful. I’m gonna hold off watching [Emerald Fennell’s 2026 film adaptation], though. Oh yeah? Tell me why.

I think the book is what it is to you, and I think it’s beautiful, and I want to keep the book what it is to me at the moment. That gives us a nice segue to putting your own work on the screen, which you did 28 years ago with Practical Magic, starring Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, and Stockard Channing. That’s an iconic cast—I was surprised to read that when the movie was first released, it was a flop. Is that true?

It’s true. Practical Magic didn’t do well at all.... I think it was very unusual to have a film come out with so many women in it. I mean, it’s more about sisterhood than it is a love story. And so it didn’t do very well at the box office. It didn’t get good reviews from male critics, that’s for sure. Also, the men in Practical Magic drop like flies; male critics might object. But your women are so complex and interesting and enigmatic. In your 108 |

YK0926_FEA_Conversations.indd 108

introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of Practical Magic, you write that the novel “addresses serious questions about the place of women in our society—questions that are as important, or more so, than they were 25 years ago.” Can you say more about that?

I’m interested in women’s relationships. That’s where Practical Magic came from. And my new book [to be published September 8], The Witches of Cambridge, is all about friendship and what friendship can mean, and how friends can change your life, and how friends can really be your family. I think that’s true for a lot of people, especially now, and especially because people live so far away from their biological families. I’m also interested in what it means to have longtime friends who knew you when you were a child, when you were in school. They know you in some deep way. It’s also a novel about women’s power and men’s efforts to quash it. What can you tell me about how this new book came to be?

I was getting a master’s at Harvard Divinity School, and our final paper was to write about someone at Harvard we disagreed with. I discovered Increase Mather, who had been the seventh president of Harvard and was Cotton Mather’s father—and boy, did I disagree with him. I found him very interesting, and I found that time period at Harvard very interesting, because even though it was the time of the Salem witch trials, there was a lot of magic on a daily basis going on at Harvard and in people’s daily lives. It was a fascinating time period, and it was interesting to me to see women having power. The Witches of Cambridge takes place in two time periods—the 17th century and the 1950s—and is about a group at Radcliffe in a secret society that’s been around for hundreds of years. Both periods are interesting to look at in terms of what was happening in the lives of women. So, two eras of hunting witches— the actual witch hunts and Senator

Joseph McCarthy’s metaphorical ones. Was that a parallel for you in this novel?

Yes, completely. And [you can] think in terms of what’s happening now, as well. So it’s three interesting time periods to compare women’s lives: now, in the ’50s, and in the 17th century. Not only do you have a new book in stores, but the movie Practical Magic 2 is out on September 11.

Yes, it’s a sequel based on the last book in the series, The Book of Magic [2021]. The film follows the sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, played again by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, and Sally’s college-age daughters. They go to England and try to break the curse on women in their family who fall in love.

What does it feel like to release a book into the wild and to have it come back to you in a new interpretation?

As a novelist you’re creating it all alone, and then it becomes a whole world, and it can be extremely gratifying to see how other people respond to the material and make it their own. And once it’s a film, it belongs to other people. It is still yours, but it changes. I was on set briefly for the first movie and again in England for Practical Magic 2. I can tell you that they really work hard, and it was raining a lot of the time, and it was fun and a great experience seeing hundreds and hundreds of people on the set having their own job to make this story theirs. It is a collective community thing that is the opposite of being alone in my room, working. Nearly 30 years separate the two films. What does it mean to you to have the sequel come out now?

It’s great that interest in the original film has gotten bigger, not smaller. It has become a cult film that grandmothers and mothers watch with daughters and granddaughters and friends. It’s become a thing that women gather to watch every year, so of course it’s wonderful that this is coming now, to carry that forward. NEWENGLAND.COM

7/16/26 4:00 PM

NE To advertise W ENGL please A call ND’S Steve M HallAatRK 603-933-0426 E T PL ACE

NE NEWW ToENGL advertise ENGLAplease AND’S ND’S call M Steve MAARK Hall RKEatET603-933-0426 TPL PLACE ACE

1 Timeless and Handcrafted to Endure. Solid Brass & Copper Lighting Lifetime Guarantee / UL Listed Hand-Applied Living Finishes Heavy Gauge Metal Made to Last for a Lifetime of Beauty.

Real Wood Shutters Make All The Difference! shuttercraft.com Northeastlantern.com info@northeastlantern.com 800-892-1206 Handcrafted in NH, USA

Interior & Exterior - All Types and Sizes Free Quotes Call 203203-245 245--2608 Shipped Nationwide - Made In USA

® CLEARS THE AIR OF SMOKE, POLLEN, POLLUTION.

Cleans the air you breathe without noisy fans or costly filters

EnergAire continuously purifies up to 4,000 cubic feet (a large room) of air and makes it breathable and invigorating. Restores natural ion balance to unhealthy environments caused by industrial pollution, automobile exhaust, central airconditioning and heating, smoke, dust, pollen, animal fur . . . removes microscopic pollution particles not removed by any other method of air purification. EnergAire was rated Number One for speed of removal of cigarette smoke by the leading U.S. consumer protection magazine. It has no noisy fan, no costly filter, and requires no maintenance. Uses less than 2 watts. 9" high. 3" diameter. Weighs less than 1 pound. $79.95

Made in USA

Ship a gift box of live lobsters, crabmeat, scallops, and other items of your choice to someone special! Hand-selected from only the finest seafood Maine has to offer. Shipping year-round. Gift Cards available too! Visit our Website

TrentonBridgeLobster.com Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound®

GETS RID OF RATS, MICE, BATS, SQUIRRELS, ROACHES & OTHER PESTS. RODAR is the super-powerful professional ultrasonic pest repeller with up to 60 or more times the power of other devices — and power is what makes RODAR so effective. RODAR ultrasound equals a jet engine — noise unbearable to pests but at frequencies humans and pets cannot hear. RODAR units are completely safe. RODAR drives pests out and keeps them from getting in. Handsome simulated walnut cabinet 5-5/8" high. Weight 1-1/2 pounds. Uses less than 5 watts. $109.95 90-day money-back guarantee — 12-month warranty.To order: Send cost for unit(s) plus $12.00 each for shipping and handling (in Mass. add 6.25% tax) by check, money order, MasterCard, Visa, or Discover number and expiration date to Micron Corp.

Since 1956 • Same Family – Same Location

207-667-2977 1237 Bar Harbor Road Trenton, ME 04605

109-111_YK0926_Marketplace.indd 109

Dept. 2159, 89 Access Rd. Norwood, MA 02062

Call Toll-Free 1-800-456-0734

store.microncorp.com

7/20/26 4:51 PM

NE W ENGL A ND’S M A RK E T PL ACE

To advertise please call Steve Hall at 603-933-0426

L-OMA Organic Buckwheat Pillows TM

Sleep Well, Dream Well, Be Well . . .

Save Energy & Your your Historic Windows Windows Window WITH an Innerglass Interior Storm

The Last Pillow You’ll Ever Need To Buy! See our complete line at:

Window WITHOUT WITHOUT an Innerglass Interior Storm

10 Minute Install

10 Seconds In / 10 Seconds Out The Perfect Storm

Innerglass

Window Systems, LLC The Compression-Fit Advantage

stormwindows.com 800-743-6207

FAMILY-OWNED • GLOUCESTER, MA

L-oma.com 207-803-8665

16 Depot Street • Bridgton, ME 04009

Country Braid House Hundreds of new and used braided rugs. Handcrafting custom wool braided rugs for over 50 years. 462 W. Main Tilton, NH 03276 • Repairs • Consignments • Braiding Supplies

603-286-4511• countrybraidhouse.com

AVAILABLE NOW! BUY YOUR COPY TODAY! ALMANAC.COM/SHOP FOR A LIST OF RETAILERS IN YOUR ZIP CODE, VISIT ALMANAC.COM/ WHERETOBUY

109-111_YK0926_Marketplace.indd 110

7/20/26 4:51 PM

SANDWICH LANTERN ONION lights LIGHTS onion A NCHOR lights LIGHTS anchor sconces CH A NDELIER S • SCONCES made in

Available in: SOLID COPPER or SOLID BR ASS

USA Since 1988

17 Jan Sebastian Dr., Unit #1, Sandwich, MA 02563

508-833-0515

www.sandwichlantern.com

Issue:

Publisher Brook Holmberg

EDITORIAL

Senior Managing Editor Jenn Johnson Executive Editor Ian Aldrich Senior Food Editor Amy Traverso Senior Digital Editor Aimee Tucker Travel/Branded Content Editor Kim Knox Beckius Associate Editor Katrina Farmer Contributing Editors Ben Hewitt,

Courtney Hollands, Rowan Jacobsen, Meg Lukens Noonan, Bill Scheller, Kate Whouley Editor at Large Mel Allen

ART Art Director Katharine Van Itallie Senior Photo Editor Heather Marcus Contributing Photographers Adam DeTour, Megan Haley, Corey Hendrickson, Greta Rybus

Issue:_________________________ August 2013 ________________________

HANDMADE On Location

PRODUCTION

Production & Distribution Director

David Ziarnowski

Production Manager Brian Johnson Senior Production Artists Jennifer Freeman, Available in: be returned by _______________________ Approval must

your proof carefully. Rachel Kipka SOLID COPPER or SOLID BRASS Jan Sebastian Dr., has Unit #1, Sandwich, MA 02563 or if not returned by the above date. esponsible for errors17 once proof been signed— DIGITAL

Vice President, Digital & Production note that color proof/pdf is 508-833-0515 to show color break only. Colors do not accurately

www.sandwichlantern.com epresent actual printed advertisement as it will appear in the publication. Senior Web Designer Amy O’Brien

Paul Belliveau Jr.

EAU

E-commerce Director Alan Henning Digital Manager Holly Sanderson errors, mark them clearly.________________________________________________________ Digital Marketing Specialist Jessica Garcia Email Marketing Manager Myra Fontaine Customer Retention Marketer Kalibb Vaillancourt ________________________________________________________ Date ___________________

O UP

RABIDEAU

MARKETING

Marketing Director Kate Hathaway Weeks (no new proof necessary) Signature: _________________________________________________

M E DI A GR O UP

Senior Sales & Marketing Manager Valerie Lithgow Marketing Assistant Natalia Rivera

ns needed. (send new proof) Signature: ______________________________________________

For press inquiries, email media@yankeepub.com.

RABIDEAU M E DI A G R O U P

ADVERTISING

Media Account Managers Kelly Moores,

Dean DeLuca, Steven Hall

Canada Account Manager Cynthia Fleming Senior Production Coordinator Janet Selle

For advertising opportunities, email sales@yankeepub.com or go to newengland.com/advertise. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe, give a gift, or change your mailing address, or for any other questions, please contact us: Mail: Yankee Magazine Customer Service

PO Box 37900, Boone, IA 50037-0900

Online: newengland.com/contact-us Email: customerservice@yankeemagazine.com Toll-free: 800-288-4284

— YANKEE PUBLISHING INC.

ESTABLISHED 1935 | AN EMPLOYEE-OWNED COMPANY

President and CEO Ernesto Burden Vice Presidents Paul Belliveau Jr., Brook Holmberg,

Jennie Meister, Sherin Pierce

Editor Emeritus Judson D. Hale Sr. CORPORATE STAFF

Vice President, Finance & Administration

Jennie Meister

Human Resources Manager Beth Parenteau Information Manager Gail Bleakley Assistant Controller Nancy Pfuntner Accounting Associate Meli Ellsworth-Osanya Executive Assistant Christine Tourgee Facilities Attendants Ken Durand, Bob Sardinskas BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Ernesto Burden, Renee Jordan, Joel Toner, Jamie Trowbridge, Cindy Turcot FOUNDERS

Robb and Beatrix Sagendorph

Yankee Publishing Inc., 1121 Main St., PO Box 520, Dublin, NH 03444 603-563-8111 / editors@yankeepub.com

Hyannis, MA I 508.771.6549 I fax 508.771.3769

PRODUCED BY GBH IN ASSOCIATION WITH YANKEE