Haymarket's Fall Saturday: The Five-Mile Radius That Used to Require a Day Trip

For years, fall in western Prince William County meant a drive. Purcellville for orchards, Middleburg for wineries, Sperryville for the mountain view. You cleared the calendar, packed the car, and made a day of it.

That habit is getting harder to justify. The 2026 fall calendar within a five-mile radius of Old Town Haymarket now includes a hometown street festival with 15,000-plus attendees, a 380-acre nature preserve running a twilight trail race, one of the largest pumpkin markets in Northern Virginia, a working winery in an 18th-century manor house, and a 52-acre farm brewery with free live music every Saturday. Most of them are open the same weekends. Several are on the same road.

Here is what your fall Saturday actually looks like this year if you stay home.

The anchors, and where they sit

Five destinations do most of the work between mid-September and early November. All are within roughly a fifteen-minute drive of the 15000 block of Washington Street.

• The Town of Haymarket, Washington Street corridor. Home of Haymarket Day and the year-round Saturday Farmers Market.
• Burnside Farms Home Farm, 4905 James Madison Highway. Fall market and pumpkin patch.
• Leopold's Preserve, Thoroughfare Road entrance. 380 acres, seven-mile trail system, free.
• The Winery at La Grange, 4970 Antioch Road. 20-acre estate, Manor House tasting room, open seven days a week.
• The Farm Brewery at Broad Run, 16015 John Marshall Highway. 52-acre farm with a Saturday concert series.

None of these are new. What is new, or at least newly obvious, is how much of a resident's fall weekend they now cover without asking you to leave the zip code.

October 17, 2026: the one Saturday everything stacks

The single busiest date on the fall calendar is Haymarket Day, Saturday, October 17. If you have lived here a few years you know the parade closes Washington Street. What you may not know about the 2026 edition:

The theme is Americana, chosen to line up with the country's 250th birthday. The parade steps off at 10:00 AM from the QBE parking lot and rolls east through Old Town, with all vehicles required in line by 9:30 AM. The town is expecting more than 15,000 attendees and 250-plus vendors across two main stages, each with its own beer garden. Sponsors this year include 66 Express, Wegmans, Park Valley Church, Golden Rule Builders, School of Rock Haymarket, Caring Senior Service, Premier Turf and Landscaping, and Thrive Medical Spa and Wellness. Vendor and parade applications closed October 6.

Two practical notes for residents:

1. If you live off Washington Street or Jefferson Street, plan car trips for before 9:00 AM or after 4:00 PM.
2. October 17 is also the second-to-last Saturday of Burnside's fall season and a peak-color weekend at Leopold's in most years. If you want to do all three, do Leopold's at sunrise, parade at 10, Burnside on the way home.

Burnside's Home Farm is the fall market, not the fall festival

This trips up newer residents every year. Burnside Farms runs two properties. The Home Farm on James Madison Highway is the fall market. The pick-your-own festival experience with Burnside Barnyard moved to the Nokesville farm several years ago.

What that means in practice: the Haymarket site opens in mid-September and runs through early November with more than 50 varieties of pumpkins and gourds, mums, straw bales, corn stalks, fresh apple cider, tree-ripe apples, and pick-your-own flower rows from the production fields. No admission fee. No timed ticket window. You pull in, load a wagon, pay, leave. It is closer to a nursery run than an outing.

The Nokesville site is the one that requires a pre-purchased, timed-entry ticket, and that is where the tulip Festival of Spring and Summer of Sunflowers happen. Passport pricing for 2026 sold out at each of three tiers, with the final tier landing at $85 per person, or $170 for a Passport Plus. Worth knowing if you are asked to meet friends at "Burnside" and want to end up at the right farm.

Leopold's Preserve is the closest thing Haymarket has to a state park

The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources has documented more than 200 bird species at Leopold's Preserve, and the site now sees more than 20,000 visits a year. It is 380 acres, seven miles of natural-surface trail with 17 pedestrian bridges and boardwalks, and it is free. The Preserve is privately owned by the White House Farm Foundation and permanently protected under a conservation easement held by the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust.

The parking lot residents use is on Thoroughfare Road at the northwestern edge of the loop. It fits about 50 cars. Access from within the Villages of Piedmont is closed to the public. Hours are dawn to dusk, every day.

Two features to look for in October and early November:

• The self-guided native tree ID walk, with QR codes on interpretive signs. Fall is the easiest time of year to actually see the tree shapes the placards describe.
• The upland depression swamp roughly half a mile east of Berry Pond. Ephemeral, best after rain, quiet.

The fall standout event is Leopold's Trail Run, now in its sixth year. It is a twilight run held on the preserve trails with 10K, 5K, and 1-mile options, all dog-friendly, plus a small family festival with a photo booth and local vendors. Registration by October 10 guarantees a race shirt. If you have a runner in the family and have not tried this one, it is the closest thing Haymarket has to a hometown race.

The Winery at La Grange, decoded

The Winery at La Grange has been on Antioch Road since 2006, but for a lot of newer residents the visit still feels like a special-occasion drive rather than a Saturday afternoon errand. It should not. The Manor House dates to the 1790s, the estate covers 20 acres with more than 8 acres under vine, and tastings run seven days a week.

Fall hours are worth memorizing because the winery closes earlier Sunday through Thursday than most people assume:

Tasting fee is $20. Reservations are required for buses, shuttles, or large groups, and none of those are seated after 3 PM. The property is dog-friendly with a picnic area, which pairs it naturally with a morning at Leopold's or an afternoon stop after Burnside.

The Farm Brewery is where the Saturday rhythm actually lives

Prince William tourism describes The Farm Brewery at Broad Run as a six-acre landscaped beer garden and Brewbarn on a 52-acre farm. That undersells the operation. The brewery runs a free Saturday Concert Series on the main lawn with two months of bands posted at a time, and the property includes a nursery, a small vineyard, a hop yard, a playground, and a dedicated axe-throwing barn. Saturday hours run 11 AM to 11 PM.

For fall specifically:

Located just three minutes by car from the Leopold's Preserve trailhead, The Farm Brewery is the natural post-hike stop for anyone who has done the four-mile loop. Beer, cider, wine slushies, and food trucks are on site; outside food and coolers are not permitted.

The Big Axe Barn requires you to be at least 16 and to not wear open-toed shoes. Reservations for axe throwing go through the brewery's website.

A sample Haymarket Saturday, October 18, 2026

The Saturday after Haymarket Day is usually the quietest, best-weather day of the fall calendar. Here is what a resident's day looks like if you use the five-mile radius on purpose:

1. 7:15 AM. Coffee at home. Drive to the Thoroughfare Road lot at Leopold's Preserve.
2. 7:30 to 9:00 AM. Do the west-side mini loop or the full four-mile perimeter. Bring binoculars if you care about the wetland birds.
3. 9:30 AM. Home, shower, regroup.
4. 10:30 AM. Burnside Farms Home Farm on James Madison Highway. Pumpkins, a gallon of cider, mums for the porch. No ticket needed.
5. 12:30 PM. Lunch at home or a food truck at the brewery.
6. 1:30 PM. The Winery at La Grange on Antioch Road for a tasting flight on the lawn.
7. 4:00 PM. The Farm Brewery at Broad Run. Kids to the playground, adults to the Saturday concert.
8. 7:00 PM. Back home before the fire pit gets cold.

Total driving: roughly 22 miles. Total distance from Old Town Haymarket at any point in the day: never more than about seven miles.

Why this matters if you live here

The consolidation is the story. Ten years ago, this exact Saturday would have required Loudoun County stops and highway time. Today, everything on the list sits inside a triangle formed by I-66, Route 15, and Antioch Road. That has quiet knock-on effects for how residents actually use the town: the weekend farmers market on Washington Street picks up traffic that used to flow out of the area, the brewery has become a de facto community center on Saturday afternoons, and Leopold's is functioning like the county park it technically is not.

If you have out-of-town family visiting in October, the day above is the visit. If you have lived here five years and never done Leopold's Trail Run or a fall tasting at La Grange, this is the year.

For neighborhood questions, market check-ins, or a coffee before Haymarket Day, Krissy Cruse is a call or text away. Schedule a Free Consultation to talk through what living in this five-mile radius looks like day to day, this fall and beyond.