Most Westchester towns market their summers around ticketed festivals and pop-up concert series. Somers does not. The town's warm-weather calendar is built around two free, county-run institutions that most residents already drive past every week: Muscoot Farm, one of the jewels of the Westchester County Parks system that welcomes tens of thousands of visitors every year to both the farm and the trails, and Lasdon Park & Arboretum on Route 35. Neither charges admission. Both run on a predictable weekly cadence from May through November. If you live here and you have been treating them as places to bring out-of-town visitors, you are underusing your own town.
This post is the argument for building a Somers summer around those two anchors, plus the two dinner spots that actually make sense afterward.
The Sunday anchor: Muscoot
If your Sunday morning has drifted into a Trader Joe's routine, the schedule to know is this: Muscoot's Farmers Market runs Sundays from 9:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m., May 10 through November 15. The market supports farmers and sustainable efforts in the area, featuring over 25 local vendors each week, every Sunday until November 16. The 2026 season is set up with more vendors, music every Sunday, and kid's activities.
A few things worth knowing that the market page does not put in bold:
- Muscoot Farm, the parking lot, and the trails are all free to visit for individuals and families. There is no admission gate to time-block around.
- There is a concession stand on the property open seasonally between 11:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., and there are tables throughout the park where you can picnic. This is the piece most residents miss: you can shop the market, hand a kid a sandwich, and let them run.
- Muscoot has a no dog policy. It is not a normal county park; it is a working farm with live animals that get spooked and stressed by unfamiliar dogs. If you have gotten used to bringing the dog everywhere, this one is different.
- You can view the animals any day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. year-round, and depending on the weather some of the animals may be in their outdoor paddocks or inside the barns.
The farm is at 51 NY-100 in Katonah, technically shared with Somers along the town line, which is why locals refer to it as both. Getting there before 10 a.m. buys you a shaded parking spot and first pick from the vendors who sell out early.
The weekday rhythm at Lasdon
Lasdon Park does the opposite work of Muscoot. Where the farm is loud, social, and Sunday-shaped, Lasdon rewards weekday visits and rewards them differently every day of the week. Lasdon Park and Arboretum is a 234-acre public park containing gardens and an arboretum, located on New York State Route 35 in Somers, and open to the public daily without charge.
Here is what actually runs there in a normal summer week:
| Day | Program | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | Gardening Tuesdays, 10 a.m.–noon | Work side by side with the gardeners at Lasdon Park every Tuesday through late November |
| Saturday | Lasdon Green Squad, 10 a.m.–2 p.m. | Every Saturday April through November; volunteers work on invasive species removal, planting, watering, weeding, trail maintenance, mulching, and other tasks |
| Weekends | Patterns In Nature exhibition, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. | An interactive exhibit and flower show on Saturdays and Sundays |
| Rotating | Ecotherapy: The Benefits of Nature, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. | A guided walk through different areas of Lasdon to explore nature and its benefits up close, free |
The park has a hard stop that catches first-timers: the tiny Veteran's Museum, the Chinese pavilion and pond, and the hilltop trail displaying busts of soldiers from every war Americans have fought in are all free, but the entire park closes at 4 p.m.. Plan around it. A 2:30 arrival gives you enough time for a full loop; a 3:45 arrival gives you a rushed selfie at the pavilion.
For families, the camp to know about is the Lasdon Explorers Summer program, which connects children ages five to twelve to nature through curiosity-led exploration, art, crafts, and games, with each session introducing campers to a different theme. The three-day-a-week, one-week sessions run Tuesday through Thursday from July 7 through July 23, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at $175 per camper per week for Westchester County residents and $225 for non-residents. The half-day format is the piece parents underrate; it slots around a work-from-home morning without eating the whole day.
Adult programming leans quieter. An outdoor painting workshop called En Plein Air, named for the French phrase meaning "in the open air," runs against the backdrop of Lasdon Park & Arboretum under the guidance of instructor Sarah Miller Totten. It is the kind of thing you register for once, then find yourself doing every year.
Two anchors, two personalities
The reason to think of Muscoot and Lasdon as a pair rather than a list is that they solve different problems in the same week.
Muscoot is the social slot. You go to be seen, to run into three people you know, to pick up peaches you did not budget for. Lasdon is the recovery slot. You go alone or with one other person, walk slowly, and leave with your shoulders lower than they were.
Most towns have one or the other. Somers is unusual in having both within a fifteen-minute drive, both free, both structured enough that you never have to check a website before you go. That is the underrated thing about summer here.
Where the day lands: dinner afterward
The restaurant scene in Somers is small, and pretending otherwise wastes the reader's time. Two places make sense as bookends to a market-and-park day, and they cover different moods.
Il Forno, at 343 US-202 in Somers, open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., with Fridays and Saturdays running until 10:00 p.m., closed Mondays. The Mondays-closed detail matters more than it sounds; if you were counting on Il Forno after a Monday holiday hike, you are eating somewhere else. Two other 2026 dates to pin: closed for vacation Monday September 7 through Monday September 14, and closed Independence Day, July 4, 2026. Locals who host summer weekend guests should be aware of the September gap in particular; it lines up with the week many people bring parents up for a first fall visit.
Prime Pub, at Heritage Hills, is the newer arrival on the local shortlist. It describes itself as an American gastropub with a variety of spaces for dining and drinking, serving elevated modern American food with a seasonally rotating menu, with a dining room overlooking the Heritage Hills Pond. The pond view is the reason to book the dining room rather than the bar side on a summer evening; the light through the windows at 7 p.m. in July is the sell.
Between the two, the split is straightforward. Il Forno is where you go after Muscoot on a Sunday because the whole extended group can sit down without a scene. Prime Pub is where you go on a Friday when you want the meal itself to be the event.
One date to circle in fall
If you want a single event to plan the tail end of the season around, the Run the Farm trail race series at Muscoot Farm in Katonah/Somers has its fall races set for October 25, 2026. The October race marks the fifteenth running of the fall Run the Farm event and includes a 5-mile trail race plus two "Kids Run The Farm" age-appropriate trail races. Even if you do not run it, the market is open that morning, and the farm is at its best in late October. A finish-line coffee at the concession stand and a slow walk back to the car is a decent way to close out the season.
The takeaway for people who live here
The instinct after moving to Somers is to keep driving to the places you already knew: Bedford, Chappaqua, White Plains. That instinct fades the summer you stop treating Muscoot and Lasdon as backups. Between the Sunday market, the Tuesday gardening hours, the Saturday Green Squad, the free walks, the summer camp, and the two restaurants that actually build a day around them, there is enough structure in a Somers week that you rarely need to leave.
If you are thinking about a move within the Hudson Valley and want a candid read on how Somers compares to Katonah, Bedford, or the Dutchess County towns across the reservoir, reach out through Christine Ryan to schedule your free consultation.
