After the Pumpkins: What Stays Open in Water Mill Once the Season Turns

Hank's PumpkinTown is down to its final weekend. The hayrides, the maze park and the pumpkin rows at 240 Montauk Highway close for the year on Sunday, November 1, the date printed at the top of Hank's own site. That same weekend, the last of the apple and pumpkin picking ends a few miles east on Horsemill Lane.

Some places in Water Mill close early. The Water Mill Museum closed on October 11. Others don't close until New Year's Eve. The roughly ten weeks in between follow a set order, and you can plan around it. One address stays open through the winter, with two major exhibitions running into 2027.

The Order Things Close

Water Mill's farm season ends one stand at a time, starting with U-pick fields and seasonal stands and finishing with the year-round markets. Here are the dates each business has posted for this year:

Two of those dates are listed differently in different places. Green Thumb's own page says its season runs to December 8. Newsday's 2026 farm-stand guide says December 6. If you want a last box of organic greens, plan on that first weekend in December and call ahead at (631) 726-1900. Halsey's own site says the farmstand is open daily from June through November. The Newsday guide pins the end to Thanksgiving and lists hours of 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day.

Milk Pail is the last farm business on the list. Even it is already partly closed: the Milk Pail farm stand at 757 Mecox Road has posted "closed for the season" with a "See you next spring!" note.

Milk Pail Carries the Farm Side to New Year's

The Milk Pail Farm Market at 1346 Montauk Highway is open Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. It is closed on Tuesdays, which is easy to forget on a weekday errand run. Newsday's guide lists the market's season as May 15 through December 31. That makes it the only Water Mill farm market with regular daily hours after Green Thumb's stand closes.

That matters most for Thanksgiving, which falls on November 26 this year. Milk Pail's home page advertises holiday goodies and pies. Its online pie shop lists large fresh-baked pies from $28 and small ones from $14.50, with pickup at the store. No Thanksgiving order cutoff had been posted as of late October, so anyone counting on a particular pie should call ahead rather than walk in the Wednesday before the holiday.

Green Thumb keeps a small presence going after its stand closes, with a winter CSA pickup on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. For coffee and breakfast, Hampton Coffee Company at 869 Montauk Highway opens at 5:15 a.m. The kitchen runs from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the full-service café takes its last seating at 2:45 p.m. For dinner, Calissa at 1020 Montauk Highway currently lists service seven nights a week on its site, though that schedule is worth checking again as winter settles in.

The Parrish Keeps Going

Most of Water Mill closes in phases through December. The Parrish Art Museum doesn't. Its galleries are open Thursday through Monday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed Tuesday and Wednesday. The museum grounds are open daily during the same hours. The café is open Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday until 4:30 p.m. It only takes cards. The shop and café close on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Every other weekend between now and spring, the museum is open.

The Parrish opened its major fall show after Labor Day. Abstract Expressionism: The East End, 1940 to Today opened September 27 and runs through February 14, 2027. In the museum's announcement, Executive Director Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Montagut traces the story "from Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner's arrival in Springs in 1945 to the artists living and working here today."

The show is a local history as much as an art history. It focuses on work made while these artists were living on the East End. It hangs Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Pat Steir alongside painters the movement has long overlooked. It includes Elaine de Kooning's 1958 Sunday Afternoon, Juarez, on loan from the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection. It follows Betty Parsons, better known as the gallerist behind Pollock, Rothko and Newman, into her own painting of the 1970s and 1980s, and continues with Joanna Pousette-Dart. The final rooms bring the story up to the present with Marina Adams and Suzanne McClelland. Studio photographs by Hans Namuth, Fred W. McDarrah and Laurie Lambrecht show the artists at work in and around their East End studios.

Chase Hall's FRESH PAINT commission opened October 1 and runs through January 25, 2027. His new painting, The Affrilachian Mountains, is made with coffee on cotton and takes up the histories of Black Appalachian miners and their labor.

Three Dates Before the Holidays

The Parrish calendar has three dates between now and December. Together they cover the same weeks the farms are closing.

1. Saturday, November 7, 11 a.m. to noon. Will Ryman holds a book-launch conversation tied to his Shanghai 6 exhibition.
2. Sunday, November 8. Last day for Until the Moon Comes Over the Mountain, a show about how contemporary artists work with landscape and natural materials. It closes the weekend after Hank's does.
3. Saturday, December 5, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Winter Welcome Day is free and brings a holiday market, food trucks, art activities for all ages and curator-led tours to 279 Montauk Highway.

Winter Welcome Day falls on the same weekend Green Thumb's stand closes, so the stand's last Saturday and the Parrish holiday market land on the same day on Montauk Highway.

The Resident Pass

Regular adult admission to the Parrish is $20. Many Water Mill households don't need to pay it. Through the Resident Pass Program, up to two adults per household living in the Southampton or Tuckahoe School Districts get free admission all year. Employees of those districts qualify too. Children under 18 and college students with a valid ID already get in free.

The pass is a digital card. You apply online with your local address and ZIP code, and the card comes by email. Pass holders also get discounts on tours, receptions and selected workshops and concerts, plus free enrollment for children in the museum's After-School Art classes. The pass has to be renewed each year, and questions go to [email protected].

For an eligible household, the galleries cost nothing, the same as the grounds, which are open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Abstract Expressionism: The East End stays up until February 14, six weeks after Milk Pail's market closes on New Year's Eve.

If you're spending more of this winter in Water Mill and thinking about how your own house should work in the colder months, The Tunick Team can walk you through it, drawing on Zachary Tunick's renovation and design background. Request a Private Hamptons Consultation and we'll set aside time before the holidays.