Peak Season at the Glenside Market, Final Saturdays at Meadowbrook Farm, and The Blair Witch Project With Its Cast at the Keswick: Your October Guide for Rydal

Think October in Rydal starts and ends with a leaf bag at the curb and the quiet hum of a SEPTA train pulling out of Meadowbrook station? Look closer. The Glenside Farmers Market pours out peak-season apples, fresh-pressed cider, and pumpkins at the station lot every Saturday morning, the free gardens of PHS Meadowbrook Farm hold three more golden weekends before the season wraps on Saturday, October 17, and a special screening of The Blair Witch Project with a live Q&A from the original cast lights up the Keswick marquee on Thursday, October 29. A market you can set your watch by, a last walk through the neighborhood’s backyard, and a movie night that feels like a film festival, all of it minutes from your front door.

This is the month Rydal and Abington Township settle into their best selves. The township’s signature Abington Fest weekend fills Crestmont Park with a movie night, a 5K, and Touch-a-Truck from October 2 through 4, porch mums brighten every stone stoop, and the oaks along Huntingdon Pike edge toward gold. Then the neighborhood calendar settles into the plans families actually keep: a Saturday market bag full of peak-season produce, one last golden afternoon in the free gardens up the road, and a Halloween-week screening night under the historic marquee. Whether you have lived here for decades or you are weighing whether to call this corner of Montgomery County home, here are the three plans to make this month.

🎬 Hand-held walking shot down a tree-lined Rydal street on a crisp late-September morning, golden light shafts through the oaks, a neighbor with a canvas market bag heading toward the train, fallen leaves drifting across the pavement. Quick cut to white canopies beside the red-brick Glenside station, crates of apples and pumpkins in the morning light. Text overlay: "SAT MORNINGS | 9-1 | GLENSIDE MARKET | THROUGH NOV."

01 Peak Season at the Glenside Farmers Market

Start with the dependable one. The Glenside Farmers Market holds court at the Glenside station lot, where Glenside Avenue meets Easton Road, every Saturday from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM, from late April through late November. October is the market at its showiest: heirloom apples by the peck, fresh-pressed cider, pumpkins and gourds, winter squash, mums, and the last of the season’s tomatoes and greens, all under the canopy of the station’s red-brick ticket building.

The setting does half the work. The market spreads out in the shadow of the station, rail platform right there, so it is a two-minute detour off the Saturday errand loop or an easy walk from anywhere in Glenside, Roslyn, and the Rydal side of the tracks. Grab a breakfast bite and a coffee from the vendors while the morning is still crisp, load up the trunk with the week’s produce, and you have the whole weekend ahead of you. On a bright October morning, with the oaks turning overhead and the pumpkins stacked high, it is the scene fall is supposed to look like.

For anyone scouting the neighborhood, it is also a quiet advertisement for the lifestyle: a real, weekly, walkable town anchor, run by the same farmers who have been coming all season, carrying the community straight into the holidays. That kind of thing does not show up in a listing photo. You have to stand in it on a Saturday morning.

🎬 Hand-held golden-hour tracking shot down a gravel path at PHS Meadowbrook Farm, grand dahlia and mum borders on either side, the historic stone estate house ahead, sugar maples turning gold overhead, a few distant figures strolling the lawn in the low sun, fallen leaves drifting across the path. Text overlay: "FREE GARDENS | WED-SAT 10-6 | THROUGH SAT OCT 17."

02 Final Saturdays in the Free Gardens at PHS Meadowbrook Farm

Then take advantage of the last weekends of something free and gorgeous right in the neighborhood. PHS Meadowbrook Farm at 1633 Washington Lane, Jenkintown, is the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s open-air demonstration garden, and the 2026 season runs Wednesdays through Saturdays, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, with the gates closing for the year on Saturday, October 17. That leaves three Saturday visits: October 3, 10, and 17. Every one of them is free, open to all, and needs no reservation, so the only thing you have to do is show up.

The farm is the neighborhood’s own secret garden. Gravel paths wander through shaped boxwood and a rose arbor, past grand borders that hit their peak in October, toward the historic stone estate house, with sugar maples turning gold overhead. It reads like a country estate, but it sits a couple of minutes from Rydal station, which makes a golden-hour walk here one of the easiest escape hatches in the township. October is when the color is richest and the light stays warm and low, and these are the final weeks to see it before the gardens sleep for the winter.

Bring the whole family. The paths are stroller-friendly, the lawn invites a blanket, and there is something quietly lovely about a neighborhood where a free, beautifully kept garden is the everyday amenity. For anyone thinking about moving here, that is the detail a listing photo never captures, and it is here for three more Saturdays.

🎬 Hand-held push through a small crowd toward the Keswick Theatre marquee on a late-October night, golden marquee bulbs glowing through falling leaves, warm light spilling from the lobby, distant figures in jackets queuing under the canopy, that electric pre-screening buzz in the air. Text overlay: "THU OCT 29 | 8 PM | BLAIR WITCH + CAST Q&A | KESWICK."

03 The Blair Witch Project With Its Cast at the Keswick: Thursday, October 29

And save October 29 for the one you will be telling everyone about. On Thursday, October 29, at 8:00 PM, with doors at 7:00, the Keswick Theatre hosts a special screening of The Blair Witch Project followed by a live Q&A with the film’s stars, Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams. The 1999 found-footage thriller rewrote modern horror, turning a stretch of woods, a hand-drawn map, and three camcorders into one of the most talked-about movie events of its era. This is that film, on the big screen, in the most beautiful movie palace in Montgomery County, with the people who made it in the room afterward.

The timing is perfect. October 29 kicks off the Halloween weekend around here, and the Keswick marquee glowing through falling leaves on a late-October night is its own kind of magic. The theatre sits at 291 N. Keswick Avenue in Glenside, a five-minute drive from Rydal, with the Glenside Regional Rail Station right across the street if you would rather ride in. Pair it with dinner at a Glenside restaurant beforehand and you have a proper October night out, the kind that makes the neighborhood feel like a small city with a very big stage.

It is the rare neighborhood event you will be quoting all November. A screening like this is exactly the thing that makes an area feel bigger than its ZIP code, and it is a perfect reason for prospective neighbors to make the drive east and fall for this corner of the county. Tickets are on the Keswick website, and a night like this one moves.