If you had October 15–18 blocked off for Strawberry Music Festival at the Nevada County Fairgrounds, you can unblock it.
Sadly, Fall Strawberry has been canceled.
Festival founder Charlie Cran died earlier this year, and his family, now Strawberry's owners, made the decision to take a beat, regroup, and focus on bringing the festival back in Spring 2027.
Which seems both sad and completely reasonable.
Strawberry isn't gone. It's having a hard year.
But here's the funny thing about Grass Valley:
October isn't canceled.
Not even a little bit.
In fact, if you actually live here, fall has never depended on one giant weekend at the fairgrounds.
Grass Valley does fall extremely well all by itself.
First, About Strawberry
Strawberry has been around since 1982, and it has one of those unusually devoted festival communities where people don't just attend—they become Strawberrians.
There's even a name for the culture: “The Strawberry Way,” built around kindness, cooperation, community, and the particular bonding experience that apparently occurs when several thousand people voluntarily live outside together for a few days.
Fall Strawberry only returned to the Nevada County Fairgrounds in 2025 after a long hiatus, and this year's October 15–18 festival was supposed to be its second fall back in Grass Valley.
Then Cran died.
His family announced in June that they needed time to grieve, recharge, and figure out how to carry his legacy forward.
If you had tickets, you can roll them over to Spring 2027 or request a refund. RV reservations are being refunded.
And Strawberry is scheduled to return May 27–31, 2027.
So this isn't goodbye.
It's see you in May.
Meanwhile, Grass Valley Is Still Grass Valley
Here's where the original story gets more interesting.
If you're visiting Grass Valley, it's easy to think our calendar revolves around the Nevada County Fairgrounds.
And don't get me wrong. We LOVE the fairgrounds.
The Nevada County Fair is practically a local religion. The Draft Horse Classic is spectacular. Strawberry brings thousands of people into town.
But those are events.
Downtown is where we actually live.
It's where you run into someone you know while trying to buy coffee. Where “I'm just popping into one store” somehow becomes lunch. Where Mill Street has gotten dramatically more inviting since it became a pedestrian plaza.
And October has its own party.
Brew Fest Is October 3. Plan Accordingly.
The Grass Valley Brew Fest takes over Mill Street Plaza Saturday, October 3, from 1 to 5 p.m.
And this is not six guys standing around a folding table with an Igloo cooler.
The current lineup includes breweries, cideries, and other craft producers from around the region, including Grass Valley Brewing, BrewBilt, BarmHaus, Crooked Lane, Ponderosa Cider, Anderson Valley Brewing, Auburn Alehouse, Cold Water Brewing and more.
Your ticket gets you a tasting mug, unlimited tastings, a lanyard, sponsor swag, a pretzel necklace—which I consider an underutilized fashion accessory—and a wooden nickel you use to vote for the People's Choice brewer.
There's live music. There's food. There's downtown.
And then, presumably, you're walking or have a designated driver.
This is one of the things I love about living here.
Grass Valley is small enough that Brew Fest feels like a town party, but not so small that the beer selection consists of Bud, Bud Light, and somebody's cousin Gary's homebrew.
Then We Slide Straight Into the Holidays
Once October hits, downtown basically starts a slow march toward Christmas.
And Grass Valley takes Christmas seriously.
The Downtown Holiday Market is November 14.
The Tree Lighting follows November 21.
Then comes Cornish Christmas, which takes over downtown on Friday nights beginning November 27 and continues December 4, 11 and 18.
If you've never been, Cornish Christmas is one of those events that sounds slightly hokey when you describe it and is ridiculously charming when you're actually standing in it.
Mill and Main Streets close to traffic. There are vendors, food, music, lights, people wandering around with hot drinks, and enough small-town Christmas energy to make even a committed cynic feel something.
Possibly joy.
Possibly a sudden need to purchase handmade soap.
Grass Valley's Cornish history is real—miners from Cornwall came here during the Gold Rush era and became an important part of the community—and the modern festival has turned that history into a street party we've now been doing for 58 years.
This town knows what it's doing with December.
And Here's What Doesn't Get Canceled
This is the part I think gets missed when people talk about whether there's “anything to do” in a small town.
Events are great.
But they aren't what makes a town livable.
What matters more is whether downtown is alive on a completely unremarkable Tuesday.
Can you get good food?
Can you walk somewhere?
Can you sit outside?
Do people actually use downtown when nobody has erected a stage?
In Grass Valley, yes.
You've got Cirino's Main Street which has been feeding people here for decades.
You've got MeZe Eatery on Mill Street.
You've got Comedor.
You've got Bicycle Thief, which is exactly the kind of restaurant people don't expect to find when they still have the outdated idea that moving to the foothills means giving up good food.
It doesn't.
We have good restaurants.
We also have parking.
I lived in San Francisco forever. I remain delighted by this combination.
That's the Actual Story
Losing Fall Strawberry is sad.
Charlie Cran created something that clearly meant an enormous amount to a lot of people, and giving his family and the festival a season to figure out what comes next seems like exactly the right thing to do.
But Grass Valley isn't facing some giant hole in its fall calendar.
Because Strawberry was never the thing holding Grass Valley together.
The fairgrounds can go quiet for a weekend.
Mill Street doesn't.
People will still be eating outside. Someone will be playing music. Somebody you know will walk past while you're having lunch. Brew Fest will fill the plaza. Then the lights will go up. Then Cornish Christmas arrives.
And before you know it, we'll all be standing on Mill Street in coats, drinking something hot and pretending we came downtown because we needed to buy a Christmas present.
We did not.
We came to see everybody.
That's small-town life.
And frankly, it's one of the reasons I love living here.
If you're thinking about making Grass Valley or Nevada City home—and wondering what life here looks like after the tourists go home—that's the stuff I really like talking about.
Not just acreage and price per square foot.
What Tuesday feels like.
Because you're not buying a house in Nevada County.
You're buying your Tuesdays, too.
Come talk to me if you're thinking about making the move. I live this slightly ridiculous two-town life between San Francisco and Grass Valley, and I'm always happy to tell you what you're actually signing up for.
