If you asked most people in Somers when "the fair" happens, they would give you one answer. That answer is wrong, or at least incomplete. The Hartford County 4-H Fair wrapped up yesterday at the fairgrounds on Egypt Road. In just over a month, a second fair opens at the exact same address, and it is not a rerun. It is a different event, run by a different organization, built at a different scale, for a different kind of Saturday.
Treating these as one blurred "fair season" means you either show up to the big one in September expecting the intimacy of the small one in August, or you skip the small one entirely because you think you already did the fair thing for the year. Neither is a great outcome if you actually want to get the most out of living five minutes from 56 Egypt Road.
The One That Just Left
The Hartford County 4-H Fair ran August 14 through 16 this year, and 2026 marks its 90th fair. It has been going since 1937, and the thing that separates it from almost every other event on the Somers calendar is who runs it: the kids. This is a youth-run fair, planned and staffed by 4-H members who spend the year preparing livestock and projects specifically to show here.
Walk the grounds during that weekend and you are looking at dairy and beef cattle, goats, rabbits, poultry, swine, sheep, and alpacas, all raised and handled by the exhibitors themselves. There are doodlebug and horse pulls if you want the pull-competition energy, but the heart of the event sits in the Exhibition Center, where 4-H'ers show off flowers, vegetables, fine arts, baked goods, photography, and veterinary science projects they have been building toward since the previous fair ended. It is a three-day event with a genuinely small footprint, no midway sprawl, and a crowd that skews toward families who already know each other from 4-H programs across Hartford County.
The One That's Coming
Five weeks later, the same fairgrounds host something built for an entirely different scale. The Four Town Fair runs September 17 through 20 this year, and its own materials describe 2026 as a year honoring 188 years of tradition alongside the nation's 250th anniversary. Established in 1838, it holds the distinction of being the oldest continuous agricultural fair in Connecticut, and it typically draws more than 30,000 fairgoers over its four days.
The name comes from the four towns tied to the fair's founding association: Enfield, Ellington, East Windsor, and Somers. Each year the fair recognizes a rotating host town from among those four, even though the physical fairgrounds stay fixed on Egypt Road. That rotation is easy to miss if you only ever think of the fair as "the Somers one," but it is part of why the event has stayed a regional draw rather than a single town's tradition.
What you get for showing up is a different animal than the 4-H fair, in scale if not in spirit. Recent seasons have brought a parade through the center of Somers, a laser light show, riverside reptile exhibits, hot dog pig racing, animal pulls, a car show, a horse show, doodlebug pulls, and the standard county-fair contest lineup of frog jumping, corn and pie eating, and the women's skillet toss. A beer and wine garden runs all four days for the adults, and a mini-farm keeps younger kids occupied between rides.
Here is where the two events actually diverge on paper:
| Hartford County 4-H Fair | Four Town Fair | |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 dates | August 14-16 | September 17-20 |
| Founded | 1937 | 1838 |
| Run by | 4-H youth members | Union Agricultural Society |
| Typical draw | Family and program-sized crowd | Over 30,000 fairgoers |
| Admission | Free | $6 Thursday, $10 Friday-Sunday, kids 12 and under free, $25 four-day pass |
| Character | Livestock shows, youth exhibits, low commercial footprint | Parade, midway, entertainment stage, beer and wine garden |
Why the Overlap in Location Confuses People
Both events share the exact same address on Egypt Road, which is exactly why residents conflate them. If you drove past the fairgrounds last weekend and saw tents and trailers, then drive past again in mid-September and see tents and trailers, your brain files that as the same fair happening twice. It isn't. One is a youth agricultural showcase with free admission and a schedule built around exhibit judging. The other is a ticketed regional event with a parade, a beer garden, and a crowd nearly the size of a small city.
The practical cost of missing that distinction is real. Families who go to the 4-H fair expecting midway rides and a beer garden will be disappointed, because that isn't the point of a 4-H fair. Families who wait for the Four Town Fair thinking they'll see the same kind of livestock judging up close, in a smaller and more personal setting, will find a much bigger production where the animals are one part of a much larger show. If what you actually want is the quieter, kid-run version of a county fair, that window already closed this year. If you want the parade and the pig racing, that window opens September 17.
The Five Weeks In Between
The stretch between the two fairs isn't dead time on the Somers calendar. Sonny's Place, the entertainment complex on Main Street with mini golf, go-karts, and a 29-foot rock climbing wall, keeps its outdoor concert series running Friday through Sunday from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and the schedule continues into the fall as the season shifts toward harvest weekends.
That same stretch is also apple and orchard season, and Somers has more than one option within a few miles of Sonny's Place on Main Street. Easy Pickin's Orchard and Irish Bend Orchard both sit close enough to make a same-day trip easy, and R Dee Winery and Powder Hollow Brewery give the adult half of the outing somewhere to land afterward. Pell Family Farm rounds out the list for anyone doing a full farm-stand circuit before the Four Town Fair opens.
None of this is complicated advice. It's a matter of knowing that Somers doesn't have one fair weekend a year. It has a five-week arc that opens with a youth livestock show and closes with a 188-year-old regional fair, and the towns and orchards and concert series in between are what fill the rest of it.
Know the Calendar, Know the Town
The larger point isn't really about fairs. It's about what it means to actually live somewhere versus visiting it once a year. Somers residents who know the difference between these two events, and plan around both, are getting more out of their own town than the version most visitors see: a single Saturday at a single fair. Understanding a place at that level of detail, the kind that separates a 90-year-old youth fair from a 188-year-old regional one sharing the same driveway, is the same instinct that matters when you're deciding whether a town fits your life for the long run.
If you're weighing a move to Somers or anywhere else in the Tolland and Hartford County suburbs and want someone who tracks these details year-round, not just the median price, Peter Vamvilis is a call away. Start Your Home Search whenever you're ready to see what else this corner of Connecticut has to offer.
