Drive down Depot Road on a Saturday morning in August and you'd be forgiven for thinking Hollis is holding its breath, waiting for September. The corn is tall, the farm stands are stacked with peaches, and everyone seems to be saving their energy for the parade. That read is backwards. By the time Old Home Days actually arrives on Nichols Field, Hollis has already spent six or seven weeks proving it doesn't need a signature event to fill a Saturday. The town's civic calendar runs hot all summer. Old Home Days is just the night it turns the lights up.
The Corn Is the Calendar
If you want to know what season Hollis is actually in, skip the weather app and check the farm stands. Begin Family Farm on Witches Spring Road runs a 20-week CSA that starts as early as late May and stretches into October, and the farm confirms plainly that its 2026 CSA season is full, which tells you something the produce alone doesn't: demand for a walk-in relationship with a working farm outpaced the farm's own capacity to serve it. The stand itself opens to the public in July regardless, meaning by August anyone can show up and buy what CSA members already claimed months ago.
A few miles over, Lull Farm's two stands, one in Hollis and one in Milford, are deep into the stretch where the farm's own history as a small fruit orchard gives way to the volume operation it's become under Farmer Dave, who still shows up at the stand to answer questions himself. Brookdale Fruit Farm rounds out the trio, and together the three are less a shopping errand than a schedule. Corn comes in, then tomatoes peak, then the pumpkins start showing up at the edge of the lot before anyone's ready to admit fall is close. Locals don't check a calendar to know where they are in the year. They check what's on the folding table.
Two Trail Networks, and They're Not the Same Trip
Here's the part most people get wrong even after years in town: Hollis doesn't have one trail system, it has two, and they serve different Saturdays.
Beaver Brook Association manages more than 35 miles of conservation land trails, open to the public every day from dawn to dusk, with different blaze colors marking different uses. It's the network built for a quiet hike, a trail run, or an afternoon with the dog on a leash. It is not built for a horse or a snowmobile. Through August, Beaver Brook is also running its Summer Nature Camp in weekly sessions, meaning the same trailheads that are peaceful at 6 a.m. are full of kids with nets and field guides by mid-morning.
Hollis Trails, a separate organization, maintains a different network of more than 40 miles that's explicitly multi-use: hiking, biking, horseback riding, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling all share the same corridors depending on the season. If you've ever wondered why you can see hoofprints on one system and never on the other, that's why. Knowing which network you're standing on before you plan the outing, especially if you're bringing a horse or waiting for the first real snow, saves you a wasted drive.
Lawrence Barn Never Really Empties Out
The building most associated with Old Home Days is Lawrence Barn, sitting adjacent to Nichols Field off Depot Road. Treat it as the one-night-a-year barn and you'll miss most of what it actually does. Through August alone, Overlook Golf Club is hosting the ReGen Roots Charity Golf Tournament on the 17th, and Alpine Grove Events Centre has a New Hampshire card show booked for the 27th. Neither of those needs Old Home Days to justify the turnout. They're just Hollis being Hollis in a normal August week.
Then the calendar tightens. Old Home Days lands on September 18 this year, staged where it has always been staged: Nichols Field and the adjacent Lawrence Barn on Depot Road, free and open to everyone. The event traces back to 1899, when Governor Frank West Rollins started the Old Home Days tradition as a way for New Hampshire towns to celebrate their own history, and Hollis has kept the format close to the original ever since. The parade alone is worth planning around, with antique cars, firetrucks, tractors, community groups, and a fair number of pets making the route.
What the calendar makes clear is that Old Home Days isn't a finale so much as a peak. A week after, on September 24, Overlook Golf Club runs its second annual Fore the Kids tournament. The barn and the field just keep working.
The Closing Stretch, If You're Tracking It
For residents who like to plan their weekends a few weeks out rather than a few days, here's the run from where we are now through the town's next big gathering:
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 10 | Beaver Brook Summer Nature Camp, Week 7 | 117 Ridge Rd |
| Aug 17 | ReGen Roots Charity Golf Tournament | Overlook Golf Club |
| Aug 27 | New Hampshire Card Show | Alpine Grove Events Centre |
| Sept 18 | Hollis Old Home Days | Nichols Field / Lawrence Barn |
| Sept 24 | Fore the Kids Golf Tourney (2nd Annual) | Overlook Golf Club |
| Nov 14 | 14th Annual Wine and Cheese Festival | 187 Pine Hill Rd |
Notice what that table doesn't have: a gap. Hollis's civic year doesn't wind down after Labor Day the way a lot of small New England towns do. It shifts venues and shifts crowds, but Lawrence Barn, Nichols Field, and Overlook Golf Club stay booked straight through to the Wine and Cheese Festival in mid-November, which is entering its 14th year and gives the town one more excuse to gather before the trails switch from hiking blazes to ski trails.
What This Actually Says About Living Here
None of this is really about events. It's about what kind of town keeps a card show, a charity golf tournament, a farm CSA, two separate trail networks, and a 127-year-old parade tradition all running in the same eight-week stretch without any of them feeling like the main event. Hollis doesn't concentrate its identity into one weekend a year. It spreads it across the whole season, which means the town rewards people who pay attention week to week rather than people waiting for the calendar to tell them it's time to show up.
That's the kind of texture that doesn't show up in a listing description or a drive-through impression, and it's exactly the sort of detail that matters if you're weighing what daily life actually looks like here versus somewhere else in Southern New Hampshire. If you're already in Hollis, you probably know this rhythm without needing it explained. If you're thinking about what it would mean to build a life around it, or you're trying to figure out how a town like this compares to Bedford, Amherst, or Windham for your own next move, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks these towns as closely as their own backyard.
Marianna Vis has spent more than 25 years learning Southern New Hampshire town by town, season by season. If you'd like to talk through what a place like Hollis actually offers day to day, not just on paper, schedule a consultation and we'll walk through it together.
