Once the Summer House has served its last dinner, what's left on a Sconset October calendar? By this week, very little inside the village. Most of what remains happens along the road out of it, at a cranberry bog that has been farmed since before the Civil War.
The village closed in a set order
Sconset doesn't close all at once. It shuts down one business at a time, and by late October the list is nearly complete.
| Place | Season status |
|---|---|
| The Summer House Restaurant | Last day was Wednesday, October 14 |
| Beachside Bistro at The Summer House | Already closed; expected to reopen in 2027 |
| Sconset Market | Closed; "Thanks for a great year" |
| Siasconset Golf, the 9-hole village course | Last day was Sunday, October 18 |
| The Wave, Route 10 "Sconset Via Milestone Road" | Runs April through September |
| Siasconset Union Chapel | Posted summer schedule ended September 20 |
The Summer House posted October 14, 2026 as its final night, with dinner seatings from 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. The Town's weekly list of open restaurants for October 12 through 19 showed it serving dinner Monday through Wednesday that week and closed for the season by Thursday. That Town list is a good off-season habit to pick up. It's a short weekly document, and it answers the question that summer never raises: who is actually open tonight?
Siasconset Golf kept fall shop hours of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with a 4 p.m. last tee time right up to its final day on October 18. Sconset Market has already changed its homepage to a simple "We are Closed."
The Siasconset post office is still open. The USPS listing gives lobby and retail hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to noon on Saturdays, with a note that hours may vary. Claudette's still lists breakfast "daily from 8-11" and a phone number for pickup orders, but its site gives no seasonal dates. Call before you walk over.
With Route 10 parked, the road matters more
The Wave describes Route 10 as the bus that "crosses the island's open moorland via Milestone Road," which it calls "the most direct connection between 'Sconset Village and downtown." Its stops start at Main Street/Sconset and continue through Chuck Hollow Road and Landmark House. It ran hourly from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., but only from April through September. In October, getting between the village and the middle of the island comes down to a car or a bicycle.
The bicycle has been an option for a long time. The Town's history of island roads and ways records that a bicycle path to Siasconset was built in 1896, before Nantucket lifted its ban on motor vehicles. After the island allowed cars, path building stopped until the late 1950s, and a new paved bicycle path to Siasconset opened in August 1958. The village has had a bike route toward Town for 130 years. Today, Milestone Road, the route the Wave calls the most direct connection, runs past the one working farm that keeps its busiest season after the summer crowd has gone.
What sits along the road: the island's oldest farm
The Nantucket Conservation Foundation calls Milestone Bog "the oldest and largest, continually operated farm on the Island." Cranberries have been grown there since 1857. Its ownership history explains why it's still a farm and not something else:
- 1968: Roy Larsen, Walter Beinecke, Jr., and Arthur Dean bought the assets of Nantucket Cranberries and added the bog's nearly 1,000 acres to the Foundation's holdings.
- 1980: The Foundation kept the land and leased the cranberry operation to Northland Cranberries, a Wisconsin company.
- 1992: Renting the land, growing the fruit and shipping it off-island proved too costly for Northland, so the Foundation went back to running the farm itself.
Only 25 acres of all that land are planted in cranberries. The rest is open space in the Middle Moors, with grasslands, ponds and habitat for red-tailed hawks, deer and rare plants. The berries are Early Black and Howes, the two varieties grown on Nantucket.
The same family has worked the bog for three generations. Tom Larrabee, a Nantucket native, started with Nantucket Cranberries, Inc. as a field hand in 1951 and became the Foundation's bog manager in 1979. In 2009 he marked 50 years at the bogs, and by then his son, Tom Jr., had worked alongside him for six years. Tom Jr.'s son, Nick Larrabee, manages Milestone today.
What the last harvest looked like
The most recent harvest report comes from last fall. On October 20, 2025, the Inquirer and Mirror reported a strong harvest at Milestone, led by Nick Larrabee as the Foundation's director of land management and Eli French as cranberry bog manager. In that report, Larrabee described the Foundation's role this way:
"As the island's sole cranberry producer, we're committed to meeting the demand and are happy to share the harvest with individuals, local businesses and food insecurity programs."
The same I&M report said a newly finished cooler room at Milestone was keeping berries fresh longer and stretching how long the public could buy them. In 2025 the Foundation sold fresh cranberries at its office, 118 Cliff Road, Monday through Friday during business hours. That was last year's setup, so check with the Foundation before driving to Cliff Road this season.
This year's harvest calendar has mostly already happened. NCF scheduled harvest walks at Milestone on Friday, October 16 and Wednesday, October 21, both from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., led by NCF's Neil Foley and Nick Larrabee. Cranberries also went on sale at the Sustainable Nantucket Farmers & Artisans Market on Saturday, October 17. One date is still ahead.
Sunday at 220 Milestone Road
The NCF Fall Festival and Batacular Bike Race is this Sunday, October 25, 2026, at Milestone Cranberry Bog. The day starts early:
- 9:00 a.m. The 16.8-mile double-lap race starts. Online registration closes at the same hour.
- 9:05 a.m. The 8.4-mile single-lap race starts. Both courses start and finish at 220 Milestone Road.
- 10:00 a.m. The free festival opens with hayrides, children's games, a Nanpuppet show, live music, food trucks, a picnic area and NCF cranberries.
The race doesn't use the paved bike path. According to the BikeSignup registration page, the laps run over NCF's Middle Moors trails, a mix of sandy roads, single-track and technical terrain. Each distance costs $64.60 with the registration fee included. Proceeds support NCF's ecological research, education programs and public access to its 9,000 acres. If you're riding the old Sconset path to the festival, leave the trail laps to the racers.
The race start times above come from BikeSignup. NCF's own festival page lists the bike race at 10 a.m., so racers should confirm their start time with NCF before Sunday. Festivalgoers should plan around the morning. The listings give different end times: NCF's homepage shows the festival ending at 2 p.m., and the Nantucket Cultural District listing says 4 p.m. Arriving at 10 works with either.
The berries outlast the season
After the festival, the next big date on the island calendar is the Christmas Stroll, December 4 through 6, 2026. Santa arrives at noon on Saturday, according to the Nantucket Chamber. That's six weeks after Sunday. NCF's fact sheet says fresh cranberries keep in the refrigerator for up to six weeks, or in the freezer for a year or longer. A bag bought at 220 Milestone Road this Sunday will still be good on Stroll weekend.
Knowing how a Sconset house lives in late October, with the Market dark and Route 10 parked for the year, is as useful as knowing how it lives in August. If you'd like to talk through how the village's off-season fits your plans, Jeremy Morgado is glad to help. Schedule a free consultation.