Brunswick County Fair in Ash, NC: The Two-Day Farm Overlap in 2026

Drive out Ash Little River Road the last weekend of October and you'll pass one driveway serving two operations that have nothing to do with each other administratively, even though they share a fence line, a parking field, and a mailing address. One is a nonprofit county fair with a carnival midway and, this year, a screening checkpoint at the gate. The other is a family farm's pumpkin season that's been running on its own calendar for years. For three nights of fair week they're entirely separate businesses. For the final two days, they're both open on the same field at once, and knowing which gate you're walking through matters more than it sounds like it should.

What the Fair Looks Like in Its Second Year

The Brunswick County Agricultural Fair & Expo returns to 2030 Ash Little River Road NW for its second annual run, October 21 through 25, 2026. It's organized as a nonprofit and staged with Dreamland Amusements supplying the midway rides. The fairgrounds will take in dairy and beef cattle, swine, goats, sheep, horses, donkeys, poultry, rabbits, and ducks for judging, with health paperwork required for each species. Horses need a current Coggins test, goats and sheep and cattle need valid health certificates, and pigs have to come from a pseudorabies-negative herd. There's a chicken show open to the public, and every bird in it gets bled before judging as part of routine disease screening.

One thing on the fair's site wasn't part of last year's promotional materials. It now states plainly that every entrance will run screening before you get in.

All patrons will go thru a metal detector check point prior to entering.

That's worth building into your evening if you're planning to arrive right at gate time rather than a few minutes early.

For a sense of what to expect on hours and cost, last year's debut fair ran gates from 4 to 11 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, with general admission at $7 cash or $8 by card and ride access sold separately as a wristband. The nightly entertainment that first year featured hometown acts: Parker Lanier, Phillip Page, Joe Copple & The Wild East, and Hunter Varnam & Ethan Clewis, with DJ Kelz Robbins keeping the music going between sets. This year's specific hours, pricing, and lineup are worth confirming on the fair's own ticket page before you head out, since a fair in its second year is exactly the kind of event that tends to adjust its schedule as it grows.

What Stump Hill Farms Was Already Doing Before the Fair Existed

Here's the part that gets lost in most fair announcements: Stump Hill Farms isn't a venue the county rents for one week. It's a working farm with its own fall season that predates the fair, and it runs on a completely different clock. For 2026, that season opened Saturday, September 19, and continues through Sunday, October 25, with the farm open Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and one bonus Friday on October 16. The activities are the familiar fall-farm lineup, hayrides out to the pumpkin patch, gem mining, a jumping pillow, and the rest of what's made this a Brunswick County staple for years.

That two-day weekend schedule is new this year. Last fall, in its fifth season, the farm ran Saturdays only, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with no Sunday hours at all. Adding Sundays for 2026 is a real change, and it's the detail that makes this year's overlap with the fair different from last year's.

The farm sells its own admission for this season, separate from anything the fair charges. A wristband for the carnival midway doesn't get you onto a hayride, and a farm day pass doesn't cover a fair ride ticket. They're run by different people, priced differently, and gated separately, even though you'd walk past both entrances within a hundred feet of each other during the overlap days.

The Schedule, Side by Side

The One Weekend They Actually Share

Lay the two calendars on top of each other and the overlap is narrow by design, not by accident. The fair runs five days, Wednesday through Sunday, October 21 to 25. The farm's regular season only opens on weekends. That leaves exactly two days, Saturday October 24 and Sunday October 25, when both operations are live on the same property at the same time. Everything before that, the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night fair crowds, has the farm gate closed. And October 25 isn't just the fair's closing day. It's also the last day of the farm's entire 2026 fall season.

Last year, this overlap looked different. The first-ever fair ran October 15 through 19, and since the farm was Saturday-only in its fifth season, the only day the two operations shared was Saturday, October 18. Sunday the 19th was fair-only, because the farm simply wasn't open. This year, with Sunday hours added to the farm's schedule, the shared window doubles from one day to two, and it lands on the exact weekend the farm closes for the season rather than somewhere in the middle of it. If you want to do both the pumpkin patch and the carnival fairgrounds in the same visit, October 24 and 25 aren't just convenient this year. They're the only two days that offer it, and missing them means waiting until next fall for the farm to reopen.

Why This Stretch of Road Is Already on the County's Radar

None of this happens in isolation from what's going on around it. Ash Little River Road is also where Brunswick County's Planning Board approved the Woodland Reserve Planned Development in December 2025, a 620-home age-restricted community with private roads that will connect off the same corridor. The project is described in county planning records as adjacent to Stump Hill Farms itself. The traffic impact analysis for that project called for monitoring the intersection of Ash Little River Road and No. 5 School Road NW for a possible traffic signal, to be evaluated six months to a year after the development reaches full buildout.

None of that changes anything about fair week specifically. But it's a useful piece of context if you live along this corridor and have noticed it feels busier than it used to. The road isn't just absorbing five days of fair traffic once a year. It's on the county's own list of intersections expected to need more capacity as new rooftops go in nearby, and fair weekend is simply the most visible version of a pattern that's likely to keep showing up on this stretch in smaller ways year-round.

Planning Around It

If you're headed out for fair week, the practical version of all this is straightforward. Weeknight visits, Wednesday through Friday, are fair-only, so budget time for the new screening line at the gate and don't expect the pumpkin patch to be part of that trip. If you want both experiences in one outing, Saturday the 24th or Sunday the 25th are your only options, and you'll want to plan for two separate ticket lines rather than one combined entrance. And if pumpkin season is the priority over the carnival, don't wait past that closing weekend. The farm doesn't run into November.

None of this is complicated once you know it, which is really the point. Fair week on Ash Little River Road looks like one event from the road, but it's two, running on two different clocks, and the calendar only lines them up for two days this year.

If you're weighing a move to Ash or watching how corridors like this one are shaping up for the next few years, I'd be glad to walk through what that growth actually means for property along it. Deborah Morgan has spent years tracking how Brunswick County's smaller communities change block by block, and a conversation costs nothing but a few minutes. Let's Connect.