Drive Middle Road past Spider Web Gardens in August and the place looks exactly like it always has. Greenhouses catching the afternoon light. A gravel lot with a few trucks parked at angles. The same hand-lettered feel it's had since three generations of the Williams and Stockman families ran it. Most people who pass it still think of it the way their parents did: the place you go for mulch in spring and a Christmas tree in December.
That description is no longer complete, and the gap between what people assume about this farm and what it actually is right now says something about how Tuftonboro changes without ever looking like it's changing.
A quiet handoff after 87 years
Spider Web Gardens was founded in 1938 and stayed in the same family line for most of its history, most recently under working owner Bill Stockman, who earned a plant science degree at the Thompson School at UNH before taking over from his grandfather. That run ended recently. The farm is now owned by Ed and Leah Ronan, who moved to the Lakes Region five years ago after raising three children in Franklin, Massachusetts. Ed had been a financial planner. Leah had been a teacher. Their daughter Aubree and her fiancé Paul Glynn have joined them to help run the place day to day.
None of that shows up if you just drive past. The 15 greenhouses are still there. The perennials, the cut flowers, the vegetable rows across the farm's roughly 200 acres are still there. What's different is what the Ronans have started doing with the land beyond retail.
What "new ownership" actually looks like on the ground
Earlier this month, the farm ran a Woods & Wildflowers carriage tour, a horse-drawn ride through the property's wooded trails and flower fields, staffed by rescue horses and built as an evening outing rather than a shopping trip. It's a small thing on its own. But it's the kind of small thing that tells you a new owner is thinking about the property as more than square footage of retail space. The Ronans have also said they plan to keep running community-facing programming, including seed-starting and flower-arranging sessions, alongside the walking trail that's part of the farm's redesign.
If you've lived in Tuftonboro for a while and still think of Spider Web Gardens as a once-a-season errand stop, that's worth revisiting. The retail hasn't gone anywhere. It's just no longer the only reason to turn into that gravel lot.
The week that actually anchors late August here
Old Home Days is the other fixed point on the Tuftonboro summer calendar, and the town has already posted its 2026 announcement on the town website. In past years the event has landed on the final full weekend of August, spread across three days and several different parts of town rather than one central location, which is easy to miss if you're picturing something like a single fairground.
The rhythm, based on how the town has run it historically, tends to look like this:
- Friday evening: a chicken supper at Tuftonboro United Methodist Church on Mountain Road, often followed by an evening program at Tuftonboro Central School
- Saturday: a morning 5K, a Market Day event at the Tuftonboro Historical Society, an antique car show at Central Park, and an evening lasagna dinner paired with a New Hampshire Audubon talk at the Central School
- Sunday: a scavenger hunt and nature walk on the Central Park trails, followed by a town picnic in the park
In past years the weekend has also included a cardboard boat race at 19 Mile Beach on Bay Road, judged with an actual "ice pick test" to confirm nobody snuck wood or plastic into their hull. Whether that specific event returns depends on the town's posted schedule for this year, but the pattern of gathering people at 19 Mile Beach, Central Park, and the Historical Society in the same three-day window has held for years.
If you've never gone because you assumed it was one event in one place, the more accurate way to think about it is three or four smaller gatherings that happen to share a weekend. You can show up for the car show and skip the 5K. You can catch the Sunday picnic without ever setting foot at the chicken supper. Nobody expects you at all of it.
The climb that's been there the whole time
Between errands, Abenaki Tower in Melvin Village is the kind of place longtime residents forget is available to them on a random Tuesday. The hike in is short, about five to ten minutes on a graded dirt path with roughly 70 feet of elevation gain, ending at a wooden tower first dedicated in July 1924 in front of a crowd of 125 people. Lewis McIntire, a Tuftonboro builder, put in the winning bid to construct it for $400. The tower's name comes from local record keeper Ethel Turner Burnett's account that it sits at the junction of several old Abenaki trails.
The parking area is easy to miss if you're heading westbound on Route 109, since the entrance sits right on a sharp curve. It's worth slowing down for on the approach rather than trying to spot it at speed.
From the top, tree clearing in recent years has opened up views of both Lake Winnipesaukee and the Belknap Range that weren't always this clear. The Abenaki Tower and Trail Association still runs on $25 annual memberships, the same kind of small-dues, all-volunteer structure that's kept the tower standing for a century.
The village that ties it together
None of this happens in isolation. Melvin Village, where the Melvin River meets the lake, is still the small commercial cluster it's been for decades, built around a marina, a general store, and a handful of places to eat. The Tuftonboro General Store on Middle Road, the Melvin Village Mercantile, and Melvin Village Marina remain the everyday stops. Birch & Vine, on Governor Wentworth Highway in Melvin Village, has built a following for scallops, lobster risotto, and prime rib served with lake views, the kind of place people drive to from Wolfeboro or Moultonborough on purpose rather than stumbling into.
None of these businesses are new. What's changed is the texture underneath them. A farm that looked frozen in time just changed hands and picked up new programming. A town festival that looks like a single event is really a loose collection of gatherings spread across a weekend. A tower that's been standing since 1924 has clearer views now than it did a decade ago because of ongoing clearing work. Tuftonboro doesn't announce these shifts. You just notice them if you're paying attention, or you don't, and either way the postcard looks the same from the road.
That's really the throughline for anyone who's called this town home for a while: the surface here holds steady on purpose, but the details underneath it keep moving. Worth checking in on the places you think you already know.
If you're weighing what's next for a home here, on the water or off it, Becky Fuller has spent decades watching towns like this change from the inside. Let's Connect whenever you're ready to talk through it.
