Type "Poplar Grove farmers market hours" into a search bar this week and you will get an answer that is wrong. Several results, in fact, will tell you the market runs April through November, every Wednesday, on the lawn of the historic plantation just off Highway 17. Pull up the actual event listing on Poplar Grove's own website and you get a different story. The 2026 season ran May 20 through August 26. The plantation's own calendar tagged that final Wednesday "Last Market of the summer."
That gap between what the internet says and what the plantation posted itself is not a small thing if you live in Scotts Hill. The market was never just produce and honey. It was the reason half the neighborhood organized its Wednesday morning around a specific lawn under specific shade trees. Now that lawn has a different calendar, and most of the sites still ranking for it have not caught up.
What The Internet Still Says
The stale version of the story is easy to find. Aggregator listings built years ago still describe an open-air market running eight months a year, from April through the third week of November, with a bonus Tuesday before Thanksgiving. That schedule was accurate once. It is not the schedule Poplar Grove actually ran in 2026.
The plantation's own site tells a tighter story. This year's market operated Wednesdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., starting May 20 and ending August 26. That is a fifteen-week season, not an eight-month one. If you have been planning a Wednesday drive out to Scotts Hill based on what a farmers market directory told you, you have been planning around a season that already closed.
What Actually Fills Wednesday Now
The lawn goes quiet, but the property does not. Poplar Grove still operates The Shoppes at Poplar Grove year round, a small retail row that includes Grumpy Grandpa's Coffee, Queen Esther Herbal Teas, and The Hive on the Hill mercantile and gift shop. None of those depend on market vendors showing up. They are fixed businesses on a fixed piece of land, open whether or not a produce stand is set up outside.
Guided tours of the 1850s manor house continue as well, running about ninety minutes and walking visitors through the original structure, built from materials sourced on the property and including a black walnut staircase and heart pine floors that predate the Civil War. The site does close for a stretch each winter, with guided tours resuming on a limited basis in February. But right now, in September, the grounds are very much open. What changed is the reason to go.
The Calendar That Actually Matters This Month
Here is the part most Scotts Hill residents have not clocked yet: the plantation's fall calendar is already running, and one of its bigger nights happens this Saturday.
| Event | Date | Format | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ghost Hunt (Haunted Rooms America) | September 12 | Overnight investigation, 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. | $129 per person |
| Ghost Hunt (Haunted Rooms America) | October 17 | Overnight investigation, 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. | $129 per person |
| Ghost Hunt (Haunted Rooms America) | October 24 | Overnight investigation, 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. | $129 per person |
| Full/new moon paranormal tour | Monthly, staff-led | Guided, shorter format | $25 per person |
| October Paranormal Tours | Throughout October | Manor house tours on the hour, 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. | Ticketed, advance reservation |
The September 12 Ghost Hunt is a full overnight investigation run in partnership with Haunted Rooms America, the same outfit that runs paranormal events at sites like Belle Grove Plantation in Virginia and the USS North Carolina downtown. Guests meet at the property around 7:30 p.m. and the investigation itself runs until 2 a.m., with equipment provided and snacks served through the night. It is not a haunted house walkthrough. It is closer to a working paranormal investigation, and tickets for the format run $129.
For a lighter commitment, the plantation's own staff lead shorter tours tied to the full and new moon throughout the year, priced at $25 a person and requiring advance reservation. October adds a third layer: standing manor house tours on the hour at 6 and 8 p.m., built for visitors who want the history and the atmosphere without the all-night investigation.
Why A Peanut Farm Became One Of North Carolina's Most Investigated Addresses
The paranormal draw is not marketing invention layered onto a pretty old house. The Foy family bought the land in 1795 and held it for six generations until 1971, and the property's darkest chapter involves the family's own son. Joseph Mumford Foy was an outspoken Unionist who opposed secession. His eldest son David Hiram Foy enlisted with the Confederate Army anyway, never saw combat, contracted typhus, and was brought home to die in the same rooms where he grew up. Visitors and investigators have reported his footsteps in the front office ever since, the same room where the plantation's business was once conducted.
That specific story, documented on the plantation's own site and echoed by the tour operators who run the ghost hunts, is why Poplar Grove keeps a running log its staff call the Scroll of the Dead, a record of the spirits believed to still occupy the manor house and outbuildings. Whether or not you buy any of it, the history underneath the ghost story is real: a Greek Revival house built in the early 1850s by enslaved labor, standing today on the same coastal highway that once carried Scotts Hill's peanut crop as far as New York before P.T. Barnum's circus helped popularize it nationally.
The Other Wednesday Ritual: Water, Not Vendors
Poplar Grove is not the only Scotts Hill institution running on its own private calendar. A few minutes down Scotts Hill Loop Road, Marsh Creek at Scotts Hill Marina has been family owned since 1986, and it made a quiet but significant change of its own. The marina used to sell daily ramp passes to the public, the kind of thing a weekend boater could show up and pay for on a whim. Under current owners Jeb and Stephanie Bradshaw, that model shifted. The public ramp access closed, and the property converted into a private dry storage and wet slip marina, now running about 40 wet slips for boats up to 35 feet and more than 300 dry storage slips.
The reasoning behind the change was growth. As demand for water access around Scotts Hill increased, the Bradshaws chose to serve members directly rather than compete for space with the general public at a single ramp. The result is a marina that functions less like a public launch point and more like a private club sitting directly on the Intracoastal Waterway, across from Rich's Inlet, roughly six miles north of the Wrightsville Beach bridge and eight miles south of Surf City.
The marina's restaurant, The Sailfish, reopened its upstairs dining room for the season in mid March 2026 with a new remodel and menu, and it remains one of the few restaurants in the area accessible by boat as well as by car. Chef Chris Kronenwetter's kitchen is known locally for a barbecue shrimp and grits plate that regulars order on repeat. A short drive up Scotts Hill Loop Road, Northside Grill offers another sit-down option for residents who want a meal without the drive into Wilmington proper.
The Version Worth Knowing
None of this makes Scotts Hill a busier place than it was in July. It makes it a different place, running on schedules that do not map cleanly onto the calendar months most search results assume. The farmers market had a hard stop. The marina had a business model change that outdated forum posts still argue about years later. The plantation's ghost season is already underway, with a marquee event this Saturday that most people scrolling old listings will miss entirely.
Living here means knowing which version of the schedule is current, not which version ranks highest on a search page. That is the same instinct that matters when you are trying to understand what a house on this stretch of Pender County is actually worth this fall, not what a stale listing from two seasons ago suggests.
If you are weighing a move onto Scotts Hill Loop Road, or you already live here and want a straight read on where the local market stands right now, Joel's Homes tracks this neighborhood as closely as its calendar. Reach out for a current, no pressure valuation of your home, grounded in what is actually happening in Scotts Hill today.
