Lewisburg's Farmers Market Has a Twin, and It Closes for the Year in October

Ask someone in Lewisburg where the farmers market is and you'll likely get two different answers, both correct. One points to 499 Fairground Road, where a market runs every Wednesday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., all year, rain or shine, with more than 100 vendors selling everything from fresh-roasted coffee to smoked meats. The other points to Hufnagle Park, downtown, where a much smaller market sets up on Friday afternoons from 2 to 6 p.m., but only from June through October.

These are not two names for the same thing. The Wednesday market at Fairground Road is the Lewisburg Farmers Market, a mixed vendor market open every week of the year. The Friday market at Hufnagle Park is the Susquehanna Valley Growers' Market, a growers-only market where every vendor has to have grown or produced what they're selling themselves, and most operate under sustainable or organic practices as members of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. One never stops. The other is a few Fridays from packing up until next June.

That distinction matters right now because the Friday market's final weeks overlap almost exactly with the biggest weekend on the Union County calendar.

What the Friday Market Actually Sells, and Why It Ends

The Susquehanna Valley Growers' Market deals in things a grower has to raise or make personally: pasture-raised meat, dairy, eggs, cut flowers, herbs, and baked goods, alongside seasonal produce. That structure is why the market can't simply run through winter the way the Wednesday market does. When the growing season winds down, so does the market. By the time the first hard frost is a real possibility in Union County, the Friday stalls at Hufnagle Park have already thinned out for the year.

The Wednesday market at Fairground Road doesn't share that constraint. With a broader vendor base that includes prepared foods, baked goods, and other non-grower vendors, it holds its footprint through the winter months while the growers' market goes dark until the next planting season.

For anyone who's built a Friday habit around Hufnagle Park, this is the stretch to use it. The market won't reappear until the ground warms up again.

The Same Weekend, Ten Minutes Up Route 45

While the growers' market approaches its close, Mifflinburg is doing the opposite. The town's 21st Annual Oktoberfest runs October 2 through 4 at Mifflinburg Community Park, and it's the kind of event that's grown a following precisely because it isn't trying to be a big-city version of the holiday. The mayor taps the ceremonial firkin Friday afternoon to open the weekend, and from there it's a lineup of imported German beers, Kostritzer Schwarzbier, Paulaner Oktoberfest, and Hacker-Pschorr among them, alongside craft beer from Rusty Rail and local wine from Shade Mountain Wine and Union Cellars. Saturday brings keg tossing and mug lifting alongside sets from The Little German Band and the Schützengiggles Oompah Band, with John Steven's Doubleshot playing Friday night.

Twenty-one years is long enough that Oktoberfest isn't a new addition to the Mifflinburg calendar, it's closer to a fixture. What changes year to year is timing against everything else happening in the county, and this year it lands on the same weekend the growers' market at Hufnagle Park is down to its final Fridays.

Mifflinburg's Own Clock Is Ticking Too

Oktoberfest weekend isn't the only thing in Mifflinburg on a countdown. The Mifflinburg Buggy Museum, which preserves the only intact 19th-century carriage factory still on its original site in the country, keeps Saturday and Sunday hours from 1 to 4 p.m. from May through the last Sunday in October. That means Oktoberfest weekend falls inside the museum's final open month of the year, and anyone who wants to pair a walk through the old Heiss coach works with a stein of Paulaner has a narrower window than they might assume.

The rest of downtown Mifflinburg doesn't take the same winter break. The Blue Moose keeps its axe-throwing lanes, bowling, and escape rooms running by reservation regardless of season. Carriage Corner Restaurant serves its homestyle menu in an 1850s dining room year-round, and the Scarlet D Tavern at the Mifflinburg Hotel isn't going anywhere either. The artisan shops that line the same blocks, Penns Creek Pottery and Pompeii Street Soap Co. among them, keep their own hours through the colder months, so a visit built around Oktoberfest doesn't have to end when the beer garden closes.

Where the Food Goes When the Market Closes

Back in Lewisburg, the growers who sell at Hufnagle Park on Fridays aren't the only ones feeding the county's kitchens. Banty Rooster, the Ard family's farm restaurant on Old Turnpike Road, builds its menu around ingredients raised or grown in-house, and that relationship with local agriculture doesn't pause when the growers' market does. Elizabeth's American Bistro on Market Street runs on the same premise, sourcing seasonal and local produce for a menu built around what's actually in season rather than a fixed rotation. Owl's Nest, known locally for Middle Eastern dishes made from scratch, rounds out a downtown dining scene that keeps its own supply lines running whether or not there's a Friday market tent set up ten blocks away.

None of these restaurants depend on the growers' market itself to source their food. But the overlap is a reminder that the market's closing for the season doesn't mean Union County's local food scene closes with it. It just means the produce and meat that used to change hands under a Friday afternoon tent at Hufnagle Park now moves through fewer, steadier channels until spring brings the growers back.

The next few weekends are the ones worth marking. Whoever wants a Friday at Hufnagle Park before next June should treat the remaining dates as numbered, and whoever's planning around Mifflinburg's Oktoberfest weekend should build in enough daylight hours to catch the Buggy Museum before its own season closes at the end of October. Both clocks are running down at once, just in different towns, and neither waits for the other.

If you're getting to know Union County's rhythms, whether you've lived here for years or just moved into the area, CENTURY 21 Mertz & Associates keeps a close eye on what's happening in Lewisburg and Mifflinburg beyond the housing market, because knowing the towns is part of knowing the towns.